Example sentences
zuò坐chū出zū租chē车qù去ma吗？
Shall we take a taxi?
chū出zū租chē车lái来le了。
The taxi is here.
About this word
出 is "out", 租 is "rent", 车 is "vehicle", so the whole word is a car that gets rented out. Vehicle names in Chinese are built on 车 with a description in front: 火车 (fire cart) is a train, 自行车 (self-driven cart) is a bicycle, 电车 (electric cart) is a tram. 出租 is a general verb meaning "to rent out", and it also describes rental housing. In southern China you will hear 的士, borrowed straight from English "taxi", and the verb for hailing one is 打车.
The story behind the character
出
The oracle form of 出 is 止, a foot, climbing out of 凵, a pit or a hollow. A foot leaving a dwelling. Xu Shen went another way and read it as plants pushing up out of the ground: 出, 進也, 象艸木益滋. Scholars today go with the foot and the pit. Both readings end in the same place: something inside getting outside. 出去, 出来, 出发.
租
租 is 禾 (grain) plus 且, which is there for the sound. Xu Shen wrote 租, 田賦也, a tax on farmland. In an economy built on rice and millet, tax was paid in grain, which is why the grain radical sits on the left. The same character later came to mean renting something out for money. 出租车 is literally a rented car.
车
The earliest 车 is a war chariot: two wheels, a body in the middle, a shaft out front. The traditional 車 still shows the outline; the simplified 车 lost the wheels. Xu Shen called it "the general name for cart and wheel."