只 (zhī): classifier for birds and certai…

Meanings

1 classifier for birds and certain animals
2 classifier for one of a pair (hand, eye, glove, shoe, ear)
3 classifier for boats and some utensils or vessels

Characters

只

zhī

classifier for birds and certain animals

Examples

院子里有一只黑色的猫。

Yuànzi lǐ yǒu yì zhī hēisè de māo.

There is a black cat in the courtyard.

她只找到了一只手套。

Tā zhǐ zhǎodào le yì zhī shǒutào.

She only found one glove (of a pair).

港口停着三只渔船。

Gǎngkǒu tíng zhe sān zhī yúchuán.

Three fishing boats are docked at the harbor.

Tips

usage

zhī is the default classifier for most birds and small-to-mid-sized animals (一只猫, 一只鸟) and for one half of a natural pair — a single hand, eye, ear, glove, shoe, or sock. If you talk about the full pair use 双 or 对 instead. Larger animals like horses and cows take 匹 or 头.

history

This reading is the simplified merger of 隻 ('single one of a pair'), which in turn comes from a picture of a bird 隹 held in a hand 又 — one captured bird. Traditional texts still keep 隻 and 只 as two separate characters; mainland reform collapsed them into the single shape 只 in 1956.

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Mouth radical on top — the indexing radical of the merged simplified shape. The zhī classifier reading does not come from this graph at all: it was originally the separate character 隻 (bird 隹 held in a hand 又). The 1956 simplification folded 隻 into 只, so the modern shape carries both readings but the etymology of zhī sits in the traditional form, not in these visible strokes.

ideograph

八 bā

eight; splayed lines

Bottom 八 — two diverging strokes. In the merged shape these belong to the original zhǐ particle graph (sound waves leaving a mouth) and have no semantic role in the zhī classifier reading; the classifier meaning rides on the simplified silhouette of 隻 rather than on this component.