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挨

āi / ái
verb #5,027

Meanings

  1. 1 next to; close to; touching
  2. 2 in sequence; one by one

Examples

孩子们挨着坐。
Háizimen āi zhe zuò.
The children sit next to each other.
两个村子挨得很近。
Liǎng gè cūnzi āi de hěn jìn.
The two villages are very close to each other.
我们挨家挨户地通知。
Wǒmen āijiā-āihù de tōngzhī.
We notified everyone door to door, house by house.

Tips

usage
āi expresses two related ideas: physical adjacency ('right next to') and ordered sequence ('one after another'). Key compounds: 挨着 (next to), 挨家挨户 (door to door, house by house), 挨个 (one by one, in turn), 挨近 (to approach, get close to).
mistakes
Two readings. āi (this entry) is the 'next to / in sequence' meaning — neutral, even friendly. The 挨 reading (see the ái entry) is the 'suffer / endure' meaning, almost always with something unpleasant attached: 挨打 (take a beating), 挨骂 (get scolded), 挨饿 (go hungry). The change of tone signals the change of meaning.

Components

radical
扌 shǒu
hand (radical form)
Left hand radical — the indexing component, the side-form of 手. Anchors 挨 in physical contact: leaning against, sitting next to, touching shoulders. Also fits the secondary reading ái (挨打 = take a beating) — being struck by a hand. Same family as 摸, 推, 拍, 抓.
phonetic
矣 yǐ
(classical sentence-final particle)
Right 矣 supplies the sound — yǐ drifted to āi and ái. The Old Chinese onset connects them through a velar / glottal alternation. 矣 itself is a classical particle marking completion; its role here is purely phonetic, with no semantic contribution to the contact-action meaning.

Stroke Order

挨 āi