假借字是中國古書中的用字情況之一，漢孕字的數量有限，而語言中的詞彙無窮，要用有限的文字紀錄無窮的詞彙，文字的表詞範圍就不斷地擴大，不僅僅用於記錄本義或相關意思（引申義）的詞，而且也以讀音為媒介用於與本義毫不相關的詞。凡是古文獻中的用字，如果它所記錄的詞彙不是該字的本義或引伸義，這個字就是假借字。
假借字有兩種情形：本無其字的假借、本有其字的假借。
本無其字的假借
某些詞原先並沒有為它專門造字，人們從現有的文字中選取某些同音字來記錄它，這就是本無其字的假借。為了區別用法，人們有兩種做法
1) 為假借字的本義另造新字，例如︰
| 例字 | 假借義 | 本義 | 表本義的後起字 |
| 然 | 代詞：樣子，用於形容詞尾 | 燃燒 | 燃 |
| 午 | 十二支的第七位 | 棒槌 | 杵 |
| 乎 | 疑問語氣詞 | 呼叫 | 呼 |
| 莫 | 否定代詞 | 黃昏 | 暮 |
| 且 | 表示轉折 | 祖宗 | 祖 |
2) 為假借義別造新字，例如︰
| 例字 | 本義 | 假借義 | 為假借義而 造的後起字 |
| 采 | 採摘 | 色彩 | 彩 |
| 烏 | 烏鴉 | 感嘆詞 | 嗚 |
| 與 | 幫助 | ①語氣助語②連詞 | 歟 |
本有其字的假借
某些詞原先已為它造過專用字，但出於種種原因，書寫者沒使用本字，而另找一個讀音相同或相近的字來代替，這種情形是有其字的假借。例如︰
| 假借字 | 本義 | 假借義 | 本字 |
| 毋 | 「母」的變體字 | 否定助詞 | 無 |
| 蚤 | 一種昆蟲 | 早 | 早 |
| 無 | 「舞」的初文 | 沒有或亡失 | 亡 |
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Jiajie (假借 jiǎjiè, "borrowing; making use of") are characters that are "borrowed" to write another homophonous or near-homophonous morpheme. For example, the character 來 was originally a pictogram of a wheat plant and meant *mlək "wheat". As this was pronounced similarly to the Old Chinese word *lai "to come", 來 was also used to write this verb. Eventually the more common usage, the verb "to come", became established as the default reading of the character 來, and a new character麥 was devised for "wheat". (The modern pronunciations are lái and mài.) When a character is used as a rebus this way, it is called a jiajiezi 假借字 (lit. "loaned and borrowed character") (in Wade-Giles "chia-chie" or "chia-chieh"), translatable as "phonetic loan character" or "rebus character".
As in Egyptian hieroglyphs and Sumerian cuneiform, early Chinese characters were used as rebuses to express abstract meanings that were not easily depicted. Thus many characters stood for more than one word. In some cases the extended use would take over completely, and a new character would be created for the original meaning, usually by modifying the original character with a radical (determinative). For instance, 又 yòu originally meant "right hand; right" but was borrowed to write the abstract word yòu "again; moreover". In modern usage, the character 又 exclusively represents yòu "again" while 右, which adds the "mouth radical" 口 to 又, represents yòu "right". This process of graphic disambiguation is a common source of phono-semantic compound characters.
| Pictograph or ideograph | Rebus word | Original word | New character for original word |
|---|---|---|---|
| 四 | sì "four" | sì "nostrils" | 泗 (mucous; sniffle) |
| 枼 | yè "flat, thin" | yè "leaf" | 葉 |
| 北 | běi "north" | bèi "back (of the body)" | 背 |
| 要 | yào "to want" | yāo "waist" | 腰 |
| 少 | shǎo "few" | shā "sand" | 沙 and 砂 |
| 永 | yǒng "forever" | yǒng "swim" | 泳 |
While this word jiajie dates from the Han Dynasty, the related term tongjia (通假 tōngjiǎ "interchangeable borrowing") is first attested from the Ming Dynasty. The two terms are commonly used as synonyms, but there is a linguistic distinction betweenjiajiezi being a phonetic loan character for a word that did not originally have a character, such as using 東 "a bag tied at both ends" [1] for dōng "east", and tongjia being an interchangeable character used for an existing homophonous character, such as using 蚤 zǎo "flea" for 早 zǎo "early".
According to Bernhard Karlgren, "One of the most dangerous stumbling-blocks in the interpretation of pre-Han texts is the frequent occurrence of [jiajie], loan characters."[14]
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