才

cái

talent, ability; just, only

Meaning

  • Innate talent, ability, or baseline capacity (the "raw material" of a person).
  • Limitative: Only, merely, or just; used to mark small quantity, low status, or insufficiency.

Grammar and usage

  • Temporal/Conditional adverb: Marks the fulfillment of a prerequisite ("only then," "not until," or "finally"). This often implies that an action was delayed or occurred only after a specific condition was met.

Distinctions

  • Contrast with 纔: In later texts, 纔 frequently specializes in the immediate past ("just now") or "merely," while 才 retains a broader range of limitative and conditional functions.

History and forms

  • Early usage is often interchangeable with 材 (material/timber) when referring to innate capacity or endowment.

Graphical notes

  • While paleographic similarities to 手 (hand) appear in certain scripts, the two are semantically unrelated.

Translator notes

  • In early texts, evaluate whether "material" or "natural aptitude" better fits the context of a person's capacity.
  • If both 才 and 纔 appear within a single text, check for a functional distribution between them (immediate past/merely vs. broader limitative/conditional).

Decontextualized translator aid. This page describes plausible lexical range; it does not choose what the glyph means in a particular passage.