Skip to content
Mythic Mandarin

私 (sī): meaning and stroke order

私 (sī) means personal, private, selfish.

私

Simplified
私
Traditional
私 (same form)
Pinyin
sī

Stroke order of 私

私

  • sī personal; private
  • 7 strokes

Stroke by stroke

Meaning of 私

  1. sī
    • personal
    • private
    • selfish

Radical and structure

私
Radical 禾 (Kangxi radical 115) · 7 strokes · 禾 on the left, 厶 on the right

Radicals and stroke counts: Unicode Unihan database. Structure: the shapes a character is written with (BabelStone IDS), not necessarily parts that carry meaning or sound.

私 in our stories

Preview version — Chinese review in progress.

  • 名字的最后,有一行小字:“荒年,官府禁止私放粮食,然人命关天,不敢见死不救。记此,勿让子孙忘。”

    míngzi de zuìhòu yǒu yì háng xiǎozì huāngnián guānfǔ jìnzhǐ sī fàng liángshi rán rénmìng guān tiān bù gǎn jiàn sǐ bú jiù jì cǐ wù ràng zǐsūn wàng

    After the names came a line in small script: "Famine year. The authorities forbid private grain relief, yet human life is at stake; I dare not stand by and let people die. I record this so my descendants will not forget."

    From the story Words written in rice water HSK 7–9 · Level 7

  • 第二天,他得意地去砸袁守诚的招牌,袁守诚却冷冷地说:“你违抗天条,私改雨量,明天午时三刻,就要被斩了。”

    dì-èr tiān tā déyì de qù zá Yuán Shǒuchéng de zhāopai Yuán Shǒuchéng què lěnglěng de shuō nǐ wéikàng tiāntiáo sī gǎi yǔliàng míngtiān wǔshí sān kè jiù yào bèi zhǎn le

    The next day he went smugly to smash the fortune-teller's sign, but Yuan Shoucheng said coldly, "You have defied the laws of heaven and altered the rain on your own authority. Tomorrow at a quarter past the hour of the Horse, you will be beheaded."

    From the story The Dragon King of the Jing River HSK 7–9 · Level 7

Stories using 私

Dictionary data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0). Stroke data: Hanzi Writer data, derived from Make Me a Hanzi (Arphic Public License). Animation: Hanzi Writer (MIT licence). Radicals and stroke counts: Unicode Unihan (Unicode License v3).