shǐ

Traditional: 史

#1581 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

history, historical records

Word origin

An ideograph showing a hand holding a tablet or record, originally depicting the official scribe who kept records, hence the meaning of history.

Origin
ideograph
Root
又 (yòu, hand) holding a record

Stroke order

Stroke order for 史

Examples

This book is about the history of China.

He is very interested in ancient history.

zuò

This city has a very long history.

The teacher asked us to read a book of historical records.

duàn

This is a piece of history that should not be forgotten.

史 (shǐ) means history and, in its older sense, the official who recorded events. It appears most often inside the compound 历史 (lìshǐ) but stands alone in classical and formal usage.

Appears in 1 word

Multi-character compounds in the corpus that contain 史.

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This word is part of lesson 32.