Chinese Character Wiki
除

chú

eliminate

Original meaning: 

stair steps

Phonosemantic compound. 阝 represents the meaning and 余 represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "stair steps". The meaning later shifted to "divide", "remove", and "except".

Components
阝 meaning component

阝  Meaning component

fù

  

hill, place

阝 is a component form of 阜.

余 sound component

余  Sound component

yú

  

I

Evolution

除 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

Shuowen (~100 AD)
除 Clerical script Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)

Clerical script

Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD)
除 Regular script Modern

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

除  

chú

eliminate, remove, except; to get rid of; to remove; to exclude; to eliminate; to wipe out; to divide; except; not including

Most common words with 除
Freq.
Word
Meaning

除了

besides

除非

only when

除

to remove

消除

to eliminate

排除

to eliminate

Component uses

Sound component in 1 character (0 verified)

滁

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*[l]<r>a

drjo

chú

remove; get rid of

*lra-s

drjoH

zhù

pass away


Statistics

HSK level 6

Appears in 83.8860% of movies

427th most common character in movies

464th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

9

Unicode

U+9664

Shuowen

“除，殿陛也。从，余聲。”


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