士
Meanings
- member of the senior ministerial class (old)
- scholar (old)
- bachelor
- honorific
- first class military rank
- specialist worker
- soldier
- the name for one type of the chess piece in Chinese chess
- part of the title for someone trained in certain professions
About these definitions
Source definition segments, in their original order. Characters a definition cites are shown without their Mandarin pinyin; classifier lists that CC-Canto copied from CC-CEDICT are marked Mandarin. The community dictionary is not independently verified by zimai.
Reading & tones
Schematic citation-tone diagrams from the source numbers. These are not recordings or predictions of connected speech.
Same syllable, six tones
Characters whose customary Unihan reading (kCantonese) is this syllable in each tone, chosen as in the tone atlas (2013 standard level, then the number of CC-CEDICT words they form), with CC-Canto 2017's meaning for that reading; a dash means no catalogue character has that reading. Checked syllables (-p, -t, -k) normally carry tones 1, 3 and 6. Character readings, not word readings; no frequency implied.
Written characters
Both source spellings are represented. Written membership is not an etymological or semantic claim.
Mandarin comparison · separate source entries
CC-CEDICT, the Mandarin–English dictionary, lists the same written form:
- 士 Shì CC-CEDICT · Mandarinsurname Shi
- 士 shì CC-CEDICT · Mandarinmember of the senior ministerial class (old); scholar (old); bachelor; honorific; soldier; noncommissioned officer; specialist worker
A separate source entry, shown for comparison. The same characters can carry different senses in Mandarin and in Cantonese; zimai does not align these senses.
CC-Canto includes this pinyin reference: shi4. It does not establish a Mandarin word with the same meaning.
Look up this spelling in the Mandarin dictionary ↗Compare dictionary sources Wiktionary · 14 senses · 1 Cantonese reading
Rime Cantonese 粵拼
si6
Cantonese word readings for 士. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.
CanCLID contributors · CC BY 4.0 · source & license · Data pack
Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section
Independent source senses for this spelling, with usage labels retained. Not matched to the pronunciation above.
character · Etymology 1
- (obsolete) unmarried male; bachelor
- (obsolete, honorific) man
- (obsolete) general; high-ranking military officer
- (obsolete) soldier; noncommissioned officer
- (historical) (from the Shang dynasty 商朝 through to the Late Warring States period 戰國時代) shì were men of the lowest rank of nobility, who were educated in the liù yì 六藝 (Six Arts) and drove war chariots in battle
- (historical) scholar-official (civil servant appointed by the emperor of China to perform day-to-day governance)
- (historical) self-appellation used by scholar-officials in ancient China, when addressing the emperor: I; subject
- (historical) a social stratum in ancient China
- scholar; academic; intellectual; intelligentsia
- (honorific, obsolete) suffix for a virtuous, knowledgeable or skilled person: commendable person
- (xiangqi) adviser; guard; minister: 🩨 (usually only on the black side, in some sets on both red and black sides)
- (obsolete) alternative form of 仕 (shì, “to be an official”)
- a surname
character · Etymology 2
- (music) Cantonese opera gongche notation for the note low la (6̣).
Source page · dump 2026-09-02 · Contributors & history
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