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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

遲

chí
late; tardy
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 辵
  • 16 strokes

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Origin

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *l'il): semantic 辶 (“motion”) + phonetic 犀 (OC *sliːl) – to move slowly, to be late.

;"a surname"

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • meaningChinese辵 “to walk for a while and be still for a while”
    • ideaChinese彳 “to walk slowly”
    • ideaChinese止 “foot”
  • soundChinese犀 “rhinoceros”
    • soundChinese尾 “tail (Classifier: 條／条 c; 支 mn)”
      • ideaChinese尸 “a living person who represents the dead person during a rite”
      • ideaChinese毛 “hair (of humans or animals); fur; feather (Classifier: 根 m; 條／条 c; 支 mn)”
    • meaningChinese牛 “bovine, e.g. cow, bull, ox, buffalo, bison, yak (Classifier: 頭／头 m c mb md; 條／条 m g h x; 隻／只 m c g …”

Meanings

character
  1. late; tardy
  2. slow; sluggish (of action or thought)
  3. to delay; to linger
  4. to hesitate
  5. a surname

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

遲：徐行也。从辵犀聲。詩曰：“行道遲遲。”

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

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 緩、慢。 例：遲緩、事不宜遲
  2. 晚、不早。 例：遲到、遲歸、姍姍來遲
  3. 姓。

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

How 遲 was written 字形演變

  1. 遲 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 遲 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 遲 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  4. 遲 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

  • 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
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 遲