昃

zè

仄 + 日

Definitions

zè afternoon; in decline

Etymology

Depicts the sun (日) slanting towards the west casting a tilted shadow of a person. The component depicting the tilted shadow was later replaced by the phonetic component 仄.

About

The character 昃 combines the upper radical 日 (sun) with the lower component 仄 (oblique), which provides both the sound "zè" and the idea of slanting. This structure visually represents the sun tilting westward, indicating the late afternoon when it begins to decline. The character appears mainly in classical texts, such as the Thousand Character Classic, to describe astronomical cycles and time's passage, and is seldom used in modern daily language.