只
zhī
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 隻
A measure word for birds and many animals, and for one of a pair, such as one hand or one shoe. 一只猫 is 'a cat', 三只鸟 'three birds', 一只手 'one hand'. Read zhī. The same simplified character read zhǐ is another word, 'only'; traditional characters keep the two apart and write this one 隻.
Lượng từ cho chim và nhiều loài vật, giống “con”, và cho một chiếc trong một đôi (một bàn tay, một chiếc giày). 一只猫 là một con mèo, 一只手 là một bàn tay. Đọc zhī; cùng chữ giản thể này đọc zhǐ lại là từ khác, nghĩa là “chỉ, mỗi”. Chữ phồn thể viết lượng từ này là 隻.
ClassifierRegister: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 064 (2026-11-14). Headword, Traditional form and pinyin checked against CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0) source ↗ · Hán-Việt reading: Unihan kVietnamese source ↗ ; en.wiktionary Vietnamese entries via kaikki.org extract, snapshot 2026-07-31 (CC BY-SA 4.0): Hán-Việt reading 只/隻 = chích · No Vietnamese entry is linked as its twin; the Hán-Việt reading is given character by character. Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Common questions
What does “只” mean?
A measure word for birds and many animals, and for one of a pair, such as one hand or one shoe. 一只猫 is 'a cat', 三只鸟 'three birds', 一只手 'one hand'. Read zhī. The same simplified character read zhǐ is another word, 'only'; traditional characters keep the two apart and write this one 隻.
Is “只” formal or informal?
只 is generally neutral.