抵 (dǐ): to press against

Meanings

1 to press against
2 to resist
3 to arrive

Characters

抵

dǐ

to press against; to resist; to arrive

Examples

HSK 2

飞机已经抵达北京。

Fēijī yǐjīng dǐdá Běijīng.

The plane has arrived in Beijing.

HSK 7-9

这可以抵消损失。

Zhè kěyǐ dǐxiāo sǔnshī.

This can offset the loss.

Tips

usage

Common in 抵达 (to arrive) and 抵抗 (to resist).

Components

radical

扌 shǒu

hand (radical form of 手)

Hand radical on the left - the indexing radical and the action-source for the whole character. Hands press, resist, and arrive bodily at a place; this puts 抵 alongside 推 (push), 拒 (refuse), 挡 (block), and 打 (strike) in the family of hand-driven verbs.

phonetic

氐 dǐ

base; foundation

Right side 氐 supplies the sound dǐ directly. It originally meant 'reaching the base/root,' which doubles as a semantic hint: to press against, to reach the very bottom, to arrive. Same phonetic anchors 底 (bottom), 低 (low), 邸 (lodge), 砥 (whetstone) - a tight family clustered around 'base, low, ground-level'.