Chinese Character Wiki
始

shǐ

begin

Original meaning: 

elder sister

Phonosemantic compound. 女 represents the meaning and 台 represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "elder sister", now written as 姒. The meaning later shifted to "first" and "start".

Components
女 meaning component

女  Meaning component

nǚ, rǔ

  

woman

台 sound component

台  Sound component

tái

  

platform

Evolution

始 Bronze script Early Western Zhou (~1000 BC)

Bronze script

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

Seal script

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

Clerical script

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

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

始  

shǐ

begin, start; then, only then; to begin; to start; then; only then

Most common words with 始
Freq.
Word
Meaning

开始

to begin

始终

all along

始

to begin

原始

first

创始人

creator

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*l̥əʔ

syiX

shǐ

begin


Statistics

HSK level 3

Appears in 95.5150% of movies

242nd most common character in movies

381st most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

8

Unicode

U+59CB

Shuowen

“始，女之初也。从女，台聲。”


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