zhu

The atonal pinyin romanization of the standard Mandarin pronunciation of Chinese 銖 (zhū).

zhu (plural zhu or zhus)

1. (historical) An ancient Chinese unit of weight, notionally equivalent to 100 millet seeds or 1/24 of the liang/tael/Chinese ounce, chiefly used in denominating small coins in ancient and early imperial China.

   Modern research showed the correct number of millet seeds greatly exceeded surviving examples of the zhu in weight, until one tried growing older millet strains for several generations without modern agrochemicals. By the third year, his seeds produced a zhu within about 5% of its known historical value.

• tcho (obsolete)

• sanzhu, wuzhu

The atonal pinyin romanization of the standard Mandarin pronunciation of Chinese 筑 (zhù or zhú).

zhu (plural zhu or zhus)

1. (music, historical) An ancient Chinese string instrument thought to have had a rectangular zither-like body with silk strings played with a bow.

• See Appendix:Glossary of chordophones

• Uzh, uzh

zhu

1. Nonstandard spelling of zhū.
2. Nonstandard spelling of zhú.
3. Nonstandard spelling of zhǔ.
4. Nonstandard spelling of zhù.

• English transcriptions of Mandarin speech often fail to distinguish between the critical tonal differences employed in the Mandarin language, using words such as this one without the appropriate indication of tone.

zhu

1. man