zhī
adverb #32,124

Meanings

  1. 1 respectfully; reverently (literary)
  2. 2 (archaic) only; merely (variant of 只)

Examples

Zhī hòu guānglín.
Respectfully awaiting your arrival. (formal/literary)
Tā zhī dú gǔwén.
He reads only classical texts. (archaic usage)

Tips

usage
is a literary/archaic word meaning 'respectfully' ( 'respectfully await', 'reverently obey'). It's also historically a variant of 'only', which can confuse learners — but in modern Chinese, write for 'only' and reserve for the formal 'respectfully' sense found in old letters and edicts.
memory
Radical (the 'spirit/altar' radical, derived from ) signals worship and reverence — , 'pray', 'god', 'blessing'. The cue is your reminder that this is the 'reverent' zhī, not the 'only'.

Components

radical
shì
altar; ritual (left form)
is the left-side form of (altar/spirit) and marks as a ritual-respect word — reverence shown before the spirits. Same radical in , , , — all worship-and-blessing vocabulary.
phonetic
base; root (phonetic stem)
supplies the sound, drifting from dī to zhī. The same phonetic shows up in dī (low), dǐ (bottom), dǐ (resist), but the d-/zh- swap in is unusual — likely a frozen archaic reading.

Stroke Order

zhī