什 (shí): ten (used in fractions, on chec…

Meanings

1 ten (used in fractions, on checks, in formal documents)
2 assorted; miscellaneous
3 transliteration syllable for foreign names

Characters

什

shí

ten (used in fractions, on checks, in formal documents)

Examples

这家店卖什锦饼干。

Zhè jiā diàn mài shíjǐn bǐnggān.

This shop sells assorted biscuits.

美国总统布什访问了中国。

Měiguó zǒngtǒng Bùshí fǎngwèn le Zhōngguó.

U.S. President Bush visited China.

喀什在新疆西南部。

Kāshí zài Xīnjiāng xīnánbù.

Kashgar is in southwestern Xinjiang.

Tips

usage

The shí reading splits into three live uses: (1) formal "ten" — variant of 十 kept on checks and in legal text to prevent forgery; (2) "assorted" in 什锦; (3) by far the most common today — a transliteration syllable for foreign sh-sounds: 布什 (Bush), 纳什 (Nash), 喀什 (Kashgar), 塔什干 (Tashkent), 什叶 (Shia).

register

In 家什 (household utensils) the shí weakens to neutral tone shi. This is the only common toneless reading of 什; everywhere else it stays full shí.

Components

radical

亻 rén

person (left-side form of 人)

Person radical preserves the original sense: a 什 was a Han-dynasty military unit of ten soldiers and later a household register grouping ten families. "Ten people" became the abstract "ten" and the looser "assorted/miscellaneous" (a mixed group of ten things).

phonetic

十 shí

ten

Right side 十 gives both the sound shí and the meaning "ten" directly — an unusually transparent phono-semantic pair where phonetic and semantic align. This is the etymologically primary reading of 什; the interrogative shén branched off later in colloquial speech.