学者
xuézhě · HSK 5
scholar
📚 学者 = study + person; one who studies = scholar
学 (xué) means to study or learn; 者 (zhě) is a suffix meaning the person who does something. Together: the person who studies = a scholar or academic. Same 者 appears in 记者 (reporter) and 作者 (author).
学 — hands 𦥑 + roof 冖 + child 子
Originally 學, depicting two hands manipulating something (often interpreted as counting rods or the 爻 trigram symbols) under a roof, with a child 子 below — a child learning under instruction. The simplified form 学 replaces the top with a stylized 龸. Core meaning has always been 'to study, learn'.
者 — old/elder 耂 + say 曰
Originally depicted sugarcane or a similar plant, but the form was reanalyzed as 耂 (old) over 曰 (say). It became a grammatical suffix meaning 'one who…' or 'the…thing,' nominalizing verbs and adjectives. Today 者 mainly marks agents or categories, as in 学者 'scholar' or 记者 'reporter.'