He has had a passion for reading since he was young.
Tips
usage
嗜 implies an intense, often excessive fondness. Common compounds: 嗜好 (shìhào, hobby/addiction), 嗜血 (shìxuè, bloodthirsty), 嗜酒 (shìjiǔ, alcoholism). It carries a stronger connotation than 喜欢 (xǐhuan, to like).
register
嗜 is literary and formal. In casual speech, people would say 特别爱 (tèbié ài, really love) or 上瘾 (shàngyǐn, addicted) instead.
Mouth on the left ties 嗜 to oral indulgence — eating, drinking, chewing, savouring. The radical is a strong semantic clue: an addiction or strong fondness usually starts as something one cannot stop putting in one's mouth.
Provides the sound, drifting from qí to shì along a regular Old Chinese pattern. The elder meaning is unrelated, though one can romanticise old habits as the deepest cravings — a memory hook for the mouth-plus-elder shape.
