室 (shì): room; chamber

Meanings

1 room; chamber
2 office (in compound words)

Characters

室

shì

room; chamber

Examples

教室里有很多学生。

Jiàoshì lǐ yǒu hěnduō xuéshēng.

There are many students in the classroom.

请到会议室来。

Qǐng dào huìyìshì lái.

Please come to the meeting room.

这是办公室。

Zhè shì bàngōngshì.

This is the office.

Tips

usage

室 is rarely used alone — it's typically a suffix: 教室 (classroom), 卧室 (bedroom), 办公室 (office), 实验室 (lab), 浴室 (bathroom).

grammar

To say 'a room,' use 房间, not 室 by itself. 室 is a bound morpheme used in compounds.

Components

radical

宀 mián

roof; house

Top roof radical — the indexing radical. Marks 室 as a kind of building or enclosed space. Common across the dwelling family: 家 (home), 宿 (lodge), 安 (peace, rest), 守 (guard a place), 客 (guest).

phonetic

至 zhì

to arrive

Bottom 至 supplies the sound (zhì → shì, mild drift but they share an ancient palatal series) and contributes 'arrival' semantics: a room is where one arrives and rests. Roof + arrive = 'the place reached and dwelt in'. Same phonetic in 致 (extend), 侄 (nephew).