Chinese Character Wiki
私

sī

private

Original meaning: 

grain

Phonosemantic compound. 禾 represents the meaning and 厶 represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "grain". The current meaning is a phonetic loan.

Components
禾 meaning component

禾  Meaning component

hé

  

grain stalk

厶 sound,meaning component

厶  Sound Meaning component

sī, mǒu

  

private, selfish

Evolution

私 Bronze script Late Warring States (~250 BC)

Bronze script

Late Warring States (~250 BC)
私 Seal script Shuowen (~100 AD)

Seal script

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

Clerical script

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

Regular script

Modern
Definitions

私  

sī

private, personal; secret; personal; private; selfish

Most common words with 私
Freq.
Word
Meaning

私人

private

私

personal

自私

selfish

隐私

secrets

私下

in private

Historical pronunciation

Old Chinese

Middle Chinese

Pinyin

Gloss

*[s]əj

sij

sī

private


Statistics

HSK level 5

Appears in 54.3008% of movies

807th most common character in movies

1023rd most common character in books

Miscellaneous

Strokes

7

Unicode

U+79C1

Shuowen

“私，禾也。从禾，厶聲。北道名禾主人曰私主人。”


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