zuò
noun

Meanings

  1. 1 (literary) blessing; good fortune
  2. 2 (literary) the throne; the dynastic line

Examples

Tiānxià tàipíng yǐjiǔ, guó zuò réng xīnglóng.
After a long peace, the dynasty's fortune still flourished.

Tips

history
Not used alone in modern Chinese. It survives in literary compounds like (a dynasty's fortune / length of rule) and (blessing), common in historical and classical texts.
register
Literary and historical only — seen in chronicles and classical prose, not in everyday speech.

Components

radical
shì
altar; spirit; ritual
The altar-spirit radical is the left-side form of ; it ties the character to blessings from heaven — fortune granted to a ruling house.
phonetic
zhà
abruptly; here phonetic
The right side is the phonetic; its reading drifted from zhà to zuò, the same element seen in and .

Stroke Order

zuò