箸

zhù
noun

Meanings

  1. 1 chopsticks

Examples

HSK 7-9
他放下筷子,叹了口气,吃不下。
Tā fàngxià kuàizi, tàn le kǒuqì, chī bú xià.
He set down his chopsticks and sighed, unable to eat.

Tips

history
箸 is the old word for chopsticks, replaced in modern Chinese by 筷子. 'Kuai' was adopted by boatmen who avoided the homophone of 住 (to stop), unlucky on a boat. 箸 survives in classical poetry like Li Bai's lines and in Japanese, but not in modern speech.
register
Literary and archaic. Use 筷子 in modern Chinese.

Components

radical
⺮ zhú
bamboo
The bamboo-cap radical ⺮ (the top form of 竹) marks 箸 as a bamboo implement and is its indexing radical, since chopsticks were made of bamboo.
phonetic
者 zhě
one who
The 者 element supplies the sound for 箸; it is purely phonetic, with the reading drifted from the modern value.

Stroke Order

箸 zhù