处 (chù): place; locality; spot

Meanings

1 place; locality; spot
2 part; aspect; point
3 office; department; bureau
4 classifier for locations

Characters

处

chù

place; locality; spot

Examples

到处都是人。

Dàochù dōu shì rén.

There are people everywhere.

每个人都有自己的长处。

Měi gè rén dōu yǒu zìjǐ de chángchù.

Everyone has their own strengths.

他是人事处的处长。

Tā shì rénshìchù de chùzhǎng.

He is the director of the HR department.

Tips

usage

chù covers three noun senses: physical place (到处, 处所), abstract aspect/point (长处, 用处), and bureaucratic office (办公处, 处长 = a department head). The third sense is why government and corporate signs are full of 处.

Components

radical

夂 zhǐ

walk slowly; step

Top-left indexing radical 夂 — a foot stepping down, files 处 under "slow step." The original 處 had 虎 (tiger) above 凡 (vessel) — a tiger settled in its place. The chù reading freezes that image as a noun: the spot where the resting happens, the place itself.

semantic

卜 bǔ

divine; mark

Bottom-right 卜 — two strokes that anchor the location, like a marker pin on a map. Where the verb reading chǔ emphasises the motion of settling, chù freezes the same graph as a fixed point: a place, an aspect, an office. Same shape, different grammatical weight.