Example sentences

xiànzàishídiǎn

It's ten o'clock.

shígòuma

Are ten enough?

The story behind the character

One stroke across, one stroke down, crossing into 十. Xu Shen read a lot into it: the horizontal is east-west, the vertical is north-south, all four directions plus the center. Really, 十 was just ten counting rods. Ten ones, bundled into one ten.

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