Chinese character 賙

賙 means giving material aid to people in need.

The earlier graph 周 appears in oracle-bone inscriptions—writing carved on bones and turtle shells—and on bronze vessels from the early Western Zhou period. The Zhouli, a classic text on government and ritual, describes mutual aid among five local groups arranged from smaller to larger, up to a district called 州. Later writing used 賙 to make 周’s material-aid sense explicit.

Use 賙 for literary material aid.

Use 賙 in literary or historical Chinese for aid given to people in hardship. The Chinese character dictionary 玉篇 preserves the sense, as do compounds such as 賙恤 and 賙濟; spellings 周恤 and 周濟 also appear for the same relief idea in historical writing. Japanese kanji and Korean Hanja references also record readings for 賙. In casual writing, it feels deliberately old-fashioned.

How do I type the exact 賙 character?

Type zhou in Pinyin, then choose 賙.

Pinyin is a Chinese input method that turns Latin-letter spellings into characters. Enter zhou; the candidate list may include several characters with that reading, so check for 賙’s left 貝 component. For Cangjie, a Chinese character input method, enter BCBGR.