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Etymology data from Wiktionary via Wiktextract (CC BY-SA 4.0). Chinese character data from the 說文解字, the Taiwan MOE 國語辭典簡編本 (CC BY-ND 3.0 TW) and HSK/TOCFL lists.

Explanations are written by a local model (gemma4) and only published after a verification pass against the cited sources. How it works.

Chinese

者

zhě
Used at the end of a command.
  • Pictogram
  • HSK 2
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 老
  • 8 strokes

Etymology graph

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Origin

Pictogram (象形) – a sugarcane with full stems, with some points around (either leaves or drops of sweet liquid) and an open and smiling mouth at the bottom. This is the original character for either 蔗 (OC *tjaːɡs, “sugarcane”) or 煮 (OC *tjaʔ, “to boil”). Phonetically loaned for abstract meanings.

Top component 耂 is unrelated to 老, 考, and 孝.

The variant form with an additional 丶 stroke below 耂 is influenced by Shuowen, which considered 白 as the bottom component of 者.

; one who, -er, nominalizing suffix

Etymologically related to 之 (OC *tjɯ, “nominalizing, possessive particle”) and perhaps colloquial 的 (Pulleyblank, 1995).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • partChinese土 “earth; soil”
  • partChinese丿 “left-falling stroke, usually read as 撇”
  • partChinese日 “Sun”

Words built on it: 都, 書, 或者, 豬, 作者, 著, 煮, 記者

Meanings

character
  1. Used at the end of a command.
  2. Topicalizer used after a term, to mark a pause before defining the term.
  3. this
  4. -er; -ist; one who ...; person involved in; the things which ...
  5. Used after a number, "before" 前 (qián), or "after" 後／后 (hòu) to refer to something mentioned previously.
  6. a surname, Zhe

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

者：別事詞也。从𪞶𣥐聲。𣥐，古文旅字。

Xu Shen, c. 100 CE — the first analytical dictionary of Chinese characters.

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 助詞。具代詞性，表示人、事、物的意思。 例：弱者、勝者、記者
  2. 助詞。表示停頓或語氣結束。 例：孝弟也者，其為仁之本與。（《論語．學而》）

© Ministry of Education, Taiwan — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW, shown unaltered.

How 者 was written 字形演變

  1. 者 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 者 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 者 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 者 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 者 in Regular script
    Regular
    楷書
    since c. 200 CE

Historical forms collected by the legacy etymfun dataset; most characters have several attested variants.

Sources

  • Structural decomposition (chaizi) — See upstream
  • Historical glyph forms (zdic.net 字形演变) — Rights unverified
  • HSK / TOCFL word lists — Facts (levels)
  • 教育部《國語辭典簡編本》 (Taiwan MOE) — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW
  • 說文解字 Shuowen Jiezi (Xu Shen, c. 100 CE) — Public domain
  • Written form — n/a
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 者