The character 坐 (zuò): to sit
- Pronunciation
- zuò
- Strokes
- 7
- Level
- HSK 1
- Radical
- 土
- Made of
- 人土
What it means
to sit; to take a seat; to take (a bus, airplane etc); to bear fruit; variant of 座[zuo4]
Where its shape comes from
Xu Shen glosses the word as "to halt, to settle". The small seal form, which the modern strokes preserve, shows two people on either side of one piece of earth: sitting was done in company, straight on the ground. What the character names is not our way of sitting either. People then knelt on a mat, knees to the floor, the chair reaching China only much later. The reading of the very oldest forms is still argued over.
Source: Xu Shen, Shuowen Jiezi (121 CE); the Chinese University of Hong Kong character database.
A way to remember it
Two 人, one on each side, and a vertical falling from the top down to the long bar underneath, the bar of 土, learned in the eleventh row. The four small strokes do NOT touch the vertical: that gap is the gap of 小, and it is the first thing one loses when writing fast.
This is a memory aid, not the origin of the character.
Words it appears in
- 乘坐 chéng zuò · HSK 4 to ride (in a vehicle)
- 坐下 zuò xia to sit down
- 坐标 zuò biāo coordinate (geometry)
- 坐车 zuò chē to take the car, bus, train etc
- 坐骑 zuò qí saddle horse; mount
- 端坐 duān zuò to sit upright
Writing it
See the stroke order of 坐, animated stroke by stroke.