Sinograph Addenda · Signs
thousand
| Name | thousand |
|---|---|
| Reads | qiān |
| Means | thousand |
| Taught in | 12 · Making it happen |
Where it comes from
A slanting human figure with a single stroke cut through it — the old script borrowed the word for “person” (the two sounded close) and marked it to mean a count of a thousand. Two of the tally, 二千, was two thousand, and so on up the registers. Taught in the making-it-happen chapter.
How to remember it
A person-stroke slanting over 十 ten: one figure marked as a tally — a thousand.
In the wild
urn:nabu:kanripo:KR1h0004:001:5a · license: attribution.