zhě
one who...
Origin unclear. Various theories include (1) a sugarcane plant with stems and full leaves with a mouth (口), which could be the original form of 蔗, or (2) a tree with branches, leaves, a trunk and roots with distinguishing mark 口. Either way, the original form is unrelated to the current meaning.
Bronze script
Late Shang dynasty (~1100 BC)
Seal script
Shuowen (~100 AD)
Clerical script
Qin dynasty (221-206 BC)Regular script
Modernzhě
that which; he who; those who; (after a verb or adjective) one who (is) ...; (after a noun) person involved in ...; -er; -ist; (used after a number or 後|后[hòu] or 前[qián] to refer to sth mentioned previously); (used after a term, to mark a pause before defining the term); (old) (used at the end of a command); (old) this
Sound component in 28 characters (13 verified)
Simplified component in 1 character (1 verified)
Old Chinese | Middle Chinese | Pinyin | Gloss |
*tAʔ | tsyaeX | zhě | (nominalizing particle) |
HSK level 3
Appears in 94.3617% of movies
193rd most common character in movies
103rd most common character in books
Strokes | 8 |
Unicode | U+8005 |
Shuowen | “者，別事詞也。从白，聲。，古文旅字。” |
季旭昇《說文新證》p.275-276
李学勤《字源》p.290
