离
líchī HSK2

leave

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approved by inralback19 · Feb 11, 2026, 11:54 PM · Reviewed by inralback19 on Feb 11, 2026, 11:54 PM

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Pictograph of a legendary mountain demon with horns and a tail beween its legs, now written as 魑. The traditional character 離 (leave; depart; away from) was simplified to 离 by deleting the 隹 (bird) component.

Components

林
林 SoundIconic component
lín forest
Change in form
Due to historical stylistic changes, this component is less similar to 林 than it was in ancient scripts.
𠦒
𠦒 Iconic component
bān net for catching birds or rabbits

Depicts a net. Similar to 禽.


Character Evolution

Bronze form
Bronze Late Warring States ~250 BC
Seal form
Seal Shuowen ~100 AD
Clerical form
Clerical Western Han 202 BC-9 AD
Regular Modern

Historical Pronunciations

Middle ChineseOld ChineseGloss
Baxter-Sagarttrhjer̥aj mountain demon

說文解字

《說文》:“离,山神獸也。从禽頭,从厹,从屮。歐陽喬說:‘离,猛獸也。’”

Sources

Character origin
季旭昇《說文新證》p.954林志強《《文源》評注》p.7漢語多功能字庫李学勤《字源》p.1268-1269陳靖《兩周古文字編注》p.2182
Readings & variants
Unicode
Historical pronunciations
Baxter-Sagart
Historical images
Academia Sinica