之 — Chinese character
之
zhī
marks preceding phrase as modifier of following phrase; it, him her, them; to go to
- Pinyin
- zhī
- Radical
- 4 ⼃ (Slash)
- Strokes
- 4
- Components
- 丶
- Formation
- ideographic — A foot meaning "to follow"; cursive version of 止
- Japanese
- 之 as a kanji
Common words with 之
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 之后 (之後) | zhī hòu | after; behind; (at the beginning of a sentence) afterwards; since then |
| 之间 (之間) | zhī jiān | (after a noun) between; among; amid; (used after certain bisyllabic words to form expressions indicating a short period of time, e.g. 弹指之间 (tán zhǐ zhī jiān)) |
| 之前 | zhī qián | before; prior to |
| 之一 | zhī yī | one of (sth); one out of a multitude |
| 之中 | zhī zhōng | inside; among |
| 之外 | zhī wài | outside; excluding |
| 之下 | zhī xià | under; beneath |
| 之类 (之類) | zhī lèi | and so on; and such |
| 总之 (總之) | zǒng zhī | in a word; in short |
| 之所以 | zhī suǒ yǐ | (after a noun N and before a predicate P) the reason why N P; Example: 我之所以讨厌他 (wǒ zhī suǒ yǐ tǎo yàn tā) "the reason why I dislike him (is ...)" |
| 之内 (之內) | zhī nèi | inside; within |
| 之上 | zhī shàng | above |
English words written with 之
之 in the Chinese classics
Occurrences: Tao Te Ching 251 · Analects 612 · Art of War 335 · I Ching 78 · Mencius 1895 · Zhuangzi 3080 · Great Learning 64 · Doctrine of the Mean 174
- Tao Te Ching Chapter 1
- Tao Te Ching Chapter 2
- Tao Te Ching Chapter 3
- Tao Te Ching Chapter 4
- Tao Te Ching Chapter 5
- Tao Te Ching Chapter 6
- Tao Te Ching Chapter 8
- Tao Te Ching Chapter 9
Data: Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License (graphics.txt); LGPL-3.0-or-later (dictionary.txt)); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3); CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0). Retrieved 2026-10-22.