Chinese Character Wiki
義

yì

justice

Phonosemantic compound. 羊 represents the meaning and 我 represents the sound. In ancient China sheep (羊) were associated with goodness and beauty, which is why 羊 is a component in characters like 美 (beautiful), 善 (benevolent), and 義 (justice).

Components
羊 meaning component

羊  Meaning component

yáng

  

sheep

我 sound component

我  Sound component

wǒ

  

I; me

Evolution

義 Oracle script (~1250-1000 BC)

Oracle script

(~1250-1000 BC)
義 Bronze script Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)

Bronze script

Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)
義 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
義 Clerical script Western Jin dynasty (266-316 AD)

Clerical script

Western Jin dynasty (266-316 AD)
義 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

义 (義) 

yì

right conduct, righteousness; justice; righteousness; meaning; foster (father etc); adopted; artificial (tooth, limb etc); relationship; friendship

义 (義) 

Yì

surname Yi; (Tw) abbr. for 義大利|义大利[Yì​dà​lì], Italy

Most common words with 義
Freq.
Word
Meaning

意义

sense

社会主义

socialism

主义

-ism

义务

duty

正义

justice

Component uses

Sound component in 4 characters (2 verified)

議 羲 儀 蟻

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*ŋ(r)aj-s

ngjeH

yì

duty; justice


Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 61.8933% of movies

659th most common character in movies

208th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

13

Simplified

义

Unicode

U+7FA9

Shuowen

“義，己之威儀也。从我羊。羛，《墨翟書》義从弗。魏郡有羛陽鄉，讀若錡。今屬鄴，本內黃北二十里。”


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