Word.ws English Dictionary

chih

chih is the alternative form of chi.

Meaning of chi

Noun (1)

chi (plural chis)

  1. The twenty-second letter of the Classical and Modern Greek alphabets.

Noun (2)

chi (usually uncountable, plural chis)

  1. (usually) A life force in traditional Chinese philosophy, culture, medicine, etc, related (but not limited) to breath and circulation.
    • Early Taoist philosophers and alchemists regarded ch'i as a vital force inhering in the breath and bodily fluids and developed techniques to alter and control the movement of ch'i within the body; their aim was to achieve physical longevity and spiritual power.[1987, “ch'i”, in Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th edition, volume 3, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 186, column 3

Noun (3)

chi (usually uncountable, plural chis)

  1. (usually) The Chinese foot, a traditional Chinese unit of length based on the human forearm.
    Synonyms:
    Chinese foot
  2. (Mainland-China, usually) The Chinese unit of length standardized in 1984 as ¹/₃ of a meter.
  3. (Taiwan, usually) The Taiwanese unit of length standardized as ¹⁰/₃₃ of a meter, identical to the Japanese shaku.
  4. (Hong-Kong, usually) The chek or Hong Kong foot, a unit of length standardized as 0.371475 meters.

See all 12 meanings of chi

Forms of chih

pluralchihs
alternative formch'ih

Origin of chih

From an irregular romanization of Mandarin 尺 (chǐ).

Questions about chih

What is chih the alternative form of?
Chih is the alternative form of chi.

Words near chih in the dictionary

  1. chigutisaurid
  2. chigutisaurids
  3. Chigwell
  4. Chigwellian
  5. Chigwellians
  6. chih
  7. Chih-chiang
  8. Chihalis
  9. Chiharu
  10. Chihchiang
  11. Chiheru de Jos

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chih (page history and authors); chi (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “chih.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chih. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.