chi

Meaning

Noun

• The twenty-second letter of the Classical and Modern Greek alphabets.
• A life force in traditional Chinese philosophy, culture, medicine, etc, related (but not limited) to breath and circulation.
• The Chinese foot, a traditional Chinese unit of length based on the human forearm.
• The Chinese unit of length standardized in 1984 as ¹/₃ of a meter.
• The Taiwanese unit of length standardized as ¹⁰/₃₃ of a meter, identical to the Japanese shaku.
• The chek or Hong Kong foot, a unit of length standardized as 0.371475 meters.
• Short form of chihuahua

Related

Similar words

• Chinese foot
• Taiwanese foot
• Hong Kong foot, chek

Origin

• From Latin chī, from Ancient Greek χεῖ.
• From the Mandarin Wade-Giles romanization: chʻi⁴, from Middle Chinese , from Old Chinese . Compare modern Japanese , Korean and Vietnamese khí (氣).
• From the pinyin romanization of Mandarin Chinese 尺. chek.