貼 - Dong Chinese dictionary

tiē

to paste

Original meaning:

to compensate, subsidize

Phonosemantic compound. 貝 represents the meaning and 占 represents the sound.

Components

貝 Meaning component

bèi

sea shell

In ancient China shells were used as currency.

貝 hints at the original meaning of 貼, "to compensate, subsidize", which is no longer the most common meaning of 貼 in modern Mandarin.

占 Sound component

zhàn, zhān

divine

貼 and 占 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in older Chinese.貼 /*[tʰ]ˤ[e]p/
占 /*tem/

Evolution

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)

Regular script

Modern

Definitions

贴 (貼)

tiē

paste to, stick on; attached to; to stick; to paste; to post (e.g. on a blog); to keep close to; to fit snugly; to subsidize; allowance (e.g. money for food or housing); sticker; classifier for sticking plaster: strip

Most common words with 貼

Freq.	Word	Meaning
	贴	to stick
	补贴	subsidy
	体贴	considerate (of other people's needs)
	贴心	intimate
	贴身	close-fitting

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese	Middle Chinese	Pinyin	Gloss
*[tʰ]ˤ[e]p	thep	tiē	paste (v.) [not in GSR]

Statistics

Not found in HSK word list

Appears in 23.9789% of movies

1452nd most common character in movies

1454th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes	12
Simplified	贴
Unicode	U+8CBC
Shuowen	《說文新附》：“貼，以物為質也。从貝，占聲。”

Sources

MTSU Chinese text computing

漢語多功能字庫

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Original meaning:

Freq.

Word

Meaning