牒 (dié): official document; dispatch

Meanings

1 official document; dispatch
2 register; record book
3 genealogy

Characters

牒

dié

official document

Examples

外交官通过通牒提出抗议。

Wàijiāoguān tōngguò tōngdié tíchū kàngyì.

Diplomats lodge protests through formal communications.

将军向敌人发出了最后通牒。

Jiāngjūn xiàng dírén fāchū le zuìhòu tōngdié.

The general delivered an ultimatum to the enemy.

寺院保存着唐代僧人的度牒。

Sìyuàn bǎocún zhe Tángdài sēngrén de dùdié.

The temple keeps Tang-dynasty ordination certificates of its monks.

Tips

usage

Live compounds: 通牒 (formal diplomatic note / ultimatum) and especially 最后通牒 ('final ultimatum') — the standard term in news for one state issuing a take-it-or-fight demand to another. Older compounds include 度牒 (monk's ordination certificate, Tang-Qing) and 谱牒 (clan genealogy).

history

Originally a thin wooden writing-slip — slimmer than the 牍. Han-era 'document' senses survive because pre-paper bureaucratic writing was literally inscribed on these strips; an 'ultimatum' was a tablet of writing handed over to the opposing camp. The paper-era compounds preserved the wooden-slip name.

Components

radical

片 piàn

slice; slip of wood

Left 片 (Kangxi #91) — a wooden slip, half of a tree split lengthwise. Before paper, official records were written on these slips; the radical anchors the document family: 牒, 牍, 版 (board / edition).

phonetic

枼 yè

thin leaf / slip

Right 枼 — a tree (木) below a small unit, originally 'thin leaf' — supplies the sound (yè → dié, drift in the same dental series) and a secondary semantic of 'thin slip'. Same phonetic in 蝶 (butterfly), 碟 (small plate), 谍 (spy).