其 (qí): his; her; its; their

Meanings

1 his; her; its; their
2 that; such
3 (literary possessive/demonstrative)

Characters

其

qí

his; her; its; that

Examples

其实我不知道。

Qíshí wǒ bùzhī dào.

Actually, I don't know.

其他人呢？

Qítārén ne?

What about the other people?

尤其是中国菜。

Yóuqí shì Zhōngguó cài.

Especially Chinese food.

Tips

usage

其 is literary but very common in set phrases: 其实 (actually), 其他 (other), 其中 (among them), 尤其 (especially), 其次 (secondly). It functions as a possessive pronoun in classical Chinese, equivalent to 他的/她的/它的.

Components

radical

八 bā

eight; pair of legs

Bottom indexing radical 八 - two splayed strokes forming the supporting legs of the basket-stand. Although 八 normally means "eight," here it is a stand pictograph. 其 was borrowed phonetically to write the pronoun "his/that"; the basket meaning was later marked by adding the bamboo top (箕).

semantic

甘 gān

sweet (here graphic)

Top portion 甘 - graphic shape of the woven body of an ancient winnowing basket. Originally 其 was a full pictograph of such a basket, used to toss grain so the chaff blew away. The "sweet" reading of 甘 is unrelated; here it is just the basket-shape that survived.

ideograph

一 yī

one (here horizontal stroke)

Middle horizontal - the lip of the basket's base, separating the woven body from the supporting stand. A structural connector with no independent meaning here, but it cleanly divides the upper basket from the lower legs.