Chinese Character Wiki
四

sì

four

In ancient texts the character 亖 (four horizontal strokes) was used. The current form 四 depicts breathing through the nose and is the original form of 呬. The use of 四 as a number is a phonetic loan.

Evolution

四 Oracle script (~1250-1000 BC)

Oracle script

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

Bronze script

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

Seal script

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

Clerical script

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

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

四  

sì

four; 4

Most common words with 四
Freq.
Word
Meaning

四

4

四川

Sichuan province (Szechuan) in southwest China, abbr. 川 or 蜀, capital Chengdu 成都

四处

all over the place

四周

all around

周四

Thursday

Component uses

Meaning component in 2 characters (0 verified)

駟 驷

Sound component in 4 characters (1 verified)

呬 泗 駟 驷

Iconic component in 1 character (1 verified)

呬

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*s.li[j]-s

sijH

sì

four


Statistics

HSK level 1

Appears in 70.1265% of movies

507th most common character in movies

226th most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

5

Unicode

U+56DB

Shuowen

“四，陰數也。象四分之形。，古文四。亖，籀文四。”


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Creative Commons License