sì
temple
Original meaning:
to hold
Phonosemantic compound. 寸 represents the meaning and 之 represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "to hold", now written as 持. The current meaning "temple" is a phonetic loan.
Components
Evolution

Bronze script
Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Most common words with 寺
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
mosque | ||
temple | ||
mosque | ||
cloister | ||
Shaolin Temple, Buddhist monastery famous for its kung fu monks |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*s-[d]əʔ-s | ziH | sì | hall |
Statistics
HSK level 6
Appears in 2.3707% of movies
2507th most common character in movies
1892nd most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 6 |
Unicode | U+5BFA |
Shuowen | “寺,廷也,有法度者也。从寸,之聲。” |
Sources
季旭昇《說文新證》p.234
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