lǚ
to tread on, shoes
Depicts a person (頁) using their foot (夂) to tread. 眉 was later added to embellish the character and to represent the sound while a component that depicts a shoe was also later added to 夂 (foot) to emphasize another meaning "shoes". The component that depicts a shoe was later reanalyzed as meaning component 彳 (walk).

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Bronze script
Mid Western Zhou (~900 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernFreq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
to perform | ||
résumé | ||
shoe | ||
impeccably attired | ||
fig. to be extremely cautious |
Meaning component in 1 character (1 verified)
Remnant component in 1 character (1 verified)
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[r]ijʔ | lijX | lǚ | tread on; sandal |
Not found in HSK word list
Appears in 5.4621% of movies
2489th most common character in movies
1802nd most common character in books
Strokes | 15 |
Unicode | U+5C65 |
Shuowen | “履,足所依也。从尸,从彳,从攵,舟象履形。一曰尸聲。,古文履从頁,从足。” |
季旭昇《說文新證》p.681-682
