歷
lì

experience, history

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approved by inralback19 · Dec 5, 2025, 08:22 PM · Reviewed by Prismcool on Dec 6, 2025, 02:32 AM

priginal menaing

Changed fields: components

Original meaning: pass through

Phonosemantic compound. 止 (foot) represents the meaning and 厤 represents the sound. Based on the original meaning "pass through". The meaning later expanded to also include "experience" and "history".

Components

厤
厤 Sound component
止
止 Meaning component

Depicts a foot

Change in meaning
止 hints at the original meaning of 歷, "pass through", which is no longer the most common meaning of 歷 in modern Mandarin.

Character Evolution

Oracle form
Oracle Bone ~1250-1000 BC
Bronze form
Bronze Late Western Zhou ~800 BC
Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Western Han 202 BC-9 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Eastern Han 25-220 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Three Kingdoms (Cao Wei) 222-280 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Three Kingdoms (Wu) 222-280 AD
Regular Modern

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-Sagartlek[r]ˤek pass by; in turn

說文解字

《說文》：“歷，過也。从止，厤聲。”

Sources

Character origin
漢語多功能字庫
Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Baxter-Sagart
Historical images
Academia Sinica
Etymology
Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字)