埋 (mán): to complain; to blame

Meanings

1 to complain; to blame

Characters

埋

mán

to complain; to blame

Examples

她总是埋怨丈夫不帮忙做家务。

Tā zǒngshì mányuàn zhàngfu bù bāngmáng zuò jiāwù.

She always complains that her husband doesn't help with housework.

别埋怨了，想想办法吧。

Bié mányuàn le, xiǎngxiǎng bànfǎ ba.

Stop complaining and think of a solution.

Tips

mistakes

Bound reading — appears ONLY in 埋怨. Outside this compound the character reverts to mái. Mistaking 埋怨 for máiyuàn is one of the most common HSK pronunciation errors on this char.

usage

Distinct from 抱怨: 埋怨 carries an accusatory edge (blaming someone), while 抱怨 is general griping. The mán reading has no etymological link to 'bury'; the two senses simply share the glyph.

Components

radical

土 tǔ

earth; soil

Left earth radical — the indexing radical and literal meaning anchor. To bury is to place something into the soil, so the radical names the medium. Pulls 埋 into the ground-related verb family alongside 坑 (pit), 填 (fill), 挖 (dig), 堆 (pile up).

phonetic

里 lǐ

inside; village

Right component supplies a rough sound (里 → mái, an irregular but historically attested phonetic shift) plus a strong semantic hint of 'inside'. Earth + inside = placed inside the earth, a near-perfect ideographic image of burial. The phonetic-semantic combination is unusually transparent.