About
The character "秭" originated in ancient Chinese as a numerical unit for grain, specifically denoting ten thousand 亿. Its structure is a phono-semantic compound comprising the semantic component 禾, meaning "grain", and the phonetic component 姊, which indicates its pronunciation. Initially used as a precise measure in agricultural contexts, the term later generalized to represent immense quantities in classical texts, and in modern usage it survives primarily in place names such as Zigui.
Etymology Hide
