zhé, shé, zhē
break off
Depicts a hand (扌) using an axe (斤) to chop something. Older forms of this character depicted an axe chopping a tree into two pieces.

Oracle script
(~1250-1000 BC)
Bronze script
Late Western Zhou (~800 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
Modernzhé
break off, snap; bend; to break; to fracture; to snap; to suffer loss; to bend; to twist; to turn; to change direction; convinced; to convert into (currency); discount; rebate; tenth (in price); classifier for theatrical scenes; to fold; accounts book
shé
to break (e.g. stick or bone); a loss
zhē
to turn sth over; to turn upside down; to tip sth out (of a container)
zhé
variant of 折[zhé]
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[d]ˤet-s | dejH | dì | solitary standing (sc. tree) |
*N-tet | dzyet | shé | bend (v.i.) |
*tet | tsyet | zhé | bend; break (v.t.) |
HSK level 4
Appears in 36.2005% of movies
1126th most common character in movies
1131st most common character in books
Strokes | 7 |
Unicode | U+6298 |
Shuowen | “折,斷也。从斤斷艸,譚長說。,籀文折,从艸在仌中,仌寒,故折。𣂚,篆文折,从手。” |
