(zhī) - to know, to be aware of; knowledge in Mandarin

zhī

Traditional: 知

#2909 of 5,000 Core 5000

Translation

to know, to be aware of; knowledge

Word origin

A compound character joining 矢 (shǐ, arrow) and 口 (kǒu, mouth), traditionally read as speech that flies as straight and fast as an arrow, hence to know something surely.

Origin: compound
Root: 矢 (shǐ, arrow) + 口 (kǒu, mouth)

Stroke order

知

Examples

。

I was not aware of this matter.

。

He knows nothing at all about this.

，。

As everyone knows, he works very hard.

，。

Know yourself and know your opponent, and only then can you win.

。

He is the only one who knows this secret.

知 (zhī) is the ancient single-character verb for knowing, and it is still everywhere in modern Chinese, just rarely on its own. It is the first half of 知道 and 知识, the second half of 通知 and 告知, and the core of a long list of set phrases: 一无所知, 众所周知, 不知不觉.

Standing alone it reads as literary. 此事我并不知 is written Chinese, or a character in a period drama; the spoken form is 我不知道. That register is the whole point of the word for a learner, because the set phrases it appears in are common in newspapers, reports and formal speech.

The trap is dropping 道. Beginners who meet 知道 sometimes shorten it to 知 in conversation and land somewhere between antique and odd. Keep 知道 for speech, and treat bare 知 as a building block you recognise rather than one you assemble yourself.

Where this fits

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Used in

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知: worksheet, infographic and listicle

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This word is part of lesson 59.