呆 (dāi): foolish; dull; blank

Meanings

1 foolish; dull; blank
2 to stay; to remain (colloquial)

Characters

呆

dāi

foolish; blank; to stay

口 (mouth) + 木 (tree) - mouth open under a tree, looking foolish.

Examples

他呆呆地站在那里。

Tā dāidāi de zhàn zài nàlǐ.

He stood there blankly.

你别发呆了，快走吧。

Nǐ bié fādāi le, kuài zǒu ba.

Stop spacing out, let's go.

我在家呆了一整天。

Wǒ zàijiā dāi le yì zhěngtiān.

I stayed at home the whole day.

Tips

usage

发呆 means to zone out or space out. 呆 as 'to stay' is very colloquial - in formal writing, use 待 instead.

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth; opening

Top 口 is the mouth radical and the entry's filing point. Sitting above 木 it pictures a head or face above a body; the slack-jawed image gives 呆 its sense of dull, blank, stupefied as in the modern 发呆 daydream verb.

semantic

木 mù

tree; wood

Lower 木 contributes the stiffness of wood under the open mouth, reinforcing the wooden-faced, frozen-in-place reading. Some analyses also treat 呆 as a graphic variant of 保 with a swaddled child; the modern stack 口-over-木 still works as a stand-with-jaw-hanging mnemonic.