verb #29,918

Meanings

  1. 1 to hide
  2. 2 to conceal
  3. 3 to keep secret

Examples

Tā xuǎnzé nìmíng jǔbào, bù xiǎng bàolù shēnfèn.
He chose to report anonymously, not wanting to reveal his identity.
Zhè fèn wénjian bèi rén nì cáng, zhǎo le hěn jiǔ cái fāxiàn.
This document was hidden by someone and took a long time to find.

Tips

usage
rarely appears alone; it is most commonly seen in compounds: 匿名 (anonymous), (to go into hiding), and 隐匿 (to hide; to conceal).

Components

radical
concealing enclosure
is the right-opening box radical, drawn as two strokes wrapping something on the left. It depicts a hiding-place or screened nook — exactly what something tucked inside is meant to be sheltered behind.
phonetic
ruò
if; like
sits inside the wrapper and supplies a phonetic that has drifted from ruò to nì, with both readings sharing nasal-final endings in older Chinese. The whole character pictures a person pressed into a hiding-screen, hence the meaning to conceal.

Stroke Order