de, dī, dí, dì
[possessive]
Original meaning:
bright
Phonosemantic compound. 白 represents the meaning and 勺 represents the sound. The character is based on the original meaning "bright".
Evolution

Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
Clerical script
Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)Regular script
ModernDefinitions
Most common words with 的
Freq. | Word | Meaning |
---|---|---|
[possessive particle] | ||
yes, that's right | ||
fucking | ||
some (exist) | ||
really |
Historical pronunciation
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*[t-l]ˤewk | tek | dì | bright; mark in a target |
Statistics
HSK level 1
Appears in 100.0000% of movies
2nd most common character in movies
1st most common character in books
Miscellaneous
Strokes | 8 |
Unicode | U+7684 |
Shuowen | “旳,明也。从日,勺聲。《易》曰:‘為的顙。’” |
Sources
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