Lesson 22 · Foundational Components

Movement: 止 / 走 / 辶

Lesson 18 taught 足 (zú, "foot"), the component behind 路 (lù, "road") and 跑 (pǎo, "to run"). This lesson takes the other foot in the writing system. 止, 走 and 辶 all descend from a single drawing of a footprint, and between them they sit inside a large share of the characters you will meet on transit signage, street names and doorways.

They are also, by frequency, the most valuable three components remaining. 辶 alone carries 这 (zhè, "this", ranked 11th most frequent character in modern Chinese), 过 (guò, "to pass", 46th), 道 (dào, "way, road", 52nd), 还 (hái, "still", 80th) and 进 (jìn, "to enter", 81st). (hanziDB frequency list)

Your three new components

止
 
zhǐ
foot; to stop
4 strokes
走
 
zǒu
to walk, to go
7 strokes
辶
辵 (full form)
chuò
movement, travel
3 strokes

Quick recall — click each card to flip it:

止
zhǐ — foot; to stop
走
zǒu — to walk, to go
辶
chuò — movement, travel
止 — a footprint, seen from above. Wiktionary reads the oracle-bone form as a foot drawn with three toes and a sole, pointing upwards. Its original meaning was simply "foot"; the modern sense, "to stop", came later, and the "foot" sense now survives only inside other characters. Kangxi radical 77. (Wiktionary: 止)
走 — a running figure above a foot. The oracle-bone form showed a person in motion; 止 was added beneath to make the movement explicit. Watch the trap here: the top of the modern character looks exactly like 土 (tǔ, "earth", from Lesson 7), but it has nothing to do with earth. It is a redrawing of 夭 (yāo, "bent, a figure with its head tilted"), flattened over centuries into a shape that happens to match 土. Kangxi radical 156. (Wiktionary: 走)
辶 — two ways of moving, compressed into three strokes. The full form 辵 is a compound of 彳 (chì, "a step, a short pace") and 止 (foot): stepping, plus the foot doing it. Written at speed as the left-and-bottom wrapper of a character, it collapsed into 辶, the shape you see today. It never stands alone as a word — it appears only as a component, always wrapping the lower left of whatever it carries, and is always written last. Kangxi radical 162. (Wiktionary: 辵)

Stroke order

止 — 4 strokes

Stroke order diagram for 止, 4 strokes
止 — 4 strokes
▶ watch animated

走 — 7 strokes

Stroke order diagram for 走, 7 strokes
走 — 7 strokes
▶ watch animated

辶 — 3 strokes

Stroke order diagram for 辶, 3 strokes
辶 — 3 strokes
▶ watch animated

The third stroke of 辶 is the long sweeping base that the rest of the character sits on. Because it is written last, everything 辶 wraps is drawn first, then the sweep is laid underneath it.

Examples using these components

止 keeps its original "foot" sense inside 趾, but here it supplies the sound rather than the meaning:

趾zhǐtoe

足+止=趾

足 (foot) carries the meaning; 止 (zhǐ) carries the pronunciation. (Wiktionary: 趾)

走 joins Lesson 18's 路 to make the ordinary verb for going on foot:

走路zǒu lùto walk

走+路=走路

Literally "to go the road".

辶 wraps Lesson 19's 力 to give a very common character for position:

边biānside, edge

辶+力=边

A word of caution: 力 is not doing its usual work here. 边 was simplified from traditional 邊 in the 1956 reform, and the bulky right-hand element of 邊 was replaced by 力 purely because 力 is quick to write. It contributes neither meaning nor sound. (Wiktionary: 边)

And the one you will meet on doors, using 辶 with 井 (jǐng, "a well"):

进jìnto enter, to advance

辶+井=进

Traditional 進 used 隹 (zhuī, "short-tailed bird") on the right; the 1956 reform swapped it for 井, which approximates the sound. Pair it with Lesson 12's 请 (qǐng, "please") and you have 请进 (qǐng jìn) — please come in, printed on shop doors everywhere. (Wiktionary: 进)

Check your recall

Wiktionary reads the oldest form of 止 as a picture of a:

The top of 走 looks like 土, but it is historically:

辶 is a compressed 辵, which combines 彳 ("a step") with:

In 趾 (足 + 止), the 止 supplies:

走路 (zǒu lù) as an everyday phrase means:

力 was chosen for simplified 边 on the strength of its:

Go further

Etymology sources for every character above are linked inline. For the rigorous version of any of them, see the Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters, which classifies 力 in 边 as exactly the kind of empty, shape-only component this lesson describes.

Out in the world: 请进 sits on shop doors, 出口 (from Lesson 4) and 进 mark the two directions through any barrier or station gate, and 走 appears in nearly every instruction about going somewhere on foot. Now that you hold 辶, start looking for that sweeping base stroke — once you can see it, the character sitting on top of it is usually about going, coming or passing.