Chinese Character Wiki
尺

chǐ, chě

traditional Chinese unit of length ~ 1 foot

Origin unclear. Possibly a pictograph of a side view of a person with a mark on their leg indicating the length of one foot.

Evolution

尺 Bronze script Late Warring States (~250 BC)

Bronze script

Late Warring States (~250 BC)
尺 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
尺 Clerical script Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)

Clerical script

Western Han dynasty (202 BC-9 AD)
尺 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

尺  

chǐ

Chinese measure approx. 'foot'; a Chinese foot; one-third of a meter; a ruler; a tape-measure; one of the three acupoints for measuring pulse in Chinese medicine; CL:支[zhī],把[bǎ]

尺  

chě

one of the characters used to represent a musical note in gongche notation, 工尺譜|工尺谱[gōng​chě​pǔ]

Most common words with 尺
Freq.
Word
Meaning

英尺

foot (unit of length equal to 0.3048 m)

尺

a ruler

尺寸

size

尺度

scale

公尺

meter (unit of length)

Component uses

Meaning component in 2 characters (0 verified)

昼 咫

Sound component in 3 characters (1 verified)

迟 呎 鈬

Unknown component in 1 character (0 verified)

庹

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*tʰAk

tsyhek

chǐ

foot (measure)


Statistics

HSK level 4

Appears in 23.4663% of movies

1331st most common character in movies

1474th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

4

Unicode

U+5C3A

Shuowen

“尺，十寸也。人手卻十分動脈為寸口。十寸為尺。尺，所以指尺榘事也。从尸，从乙，乙所識也。周制寸、尺、咫、尋、常、仞諸度量，皆以人之體為法。”


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