摸不着头脑

摸不著頭腦

mōbuzháotóunǎo

idiom

Meanings

1 to be unable to make head or tail of something
2 to be completely baffled

Characters

to feel; to grope

(able to reach; attain)

Examples

他说的话我完全摸不着头脑。

Tā shuō de huà wǒ wánquán mōbuzháotóunǎo.

I can't make head or tail of what he's saying.

老板突然发火，大家都摸不着头脑。

Lǎobǎn tūrán fāhuǒ, dàjiā dōu mōbuzháotóunǎo.

When the boss suddenly lost his temper, nobody could figure out why.

看完说明书，我还是摸不着头脑。

Kàn wán shuōmíngshū, wǒ háishi mōbuzháotóunǎo.

Even after reading the manual, I was still totally lost.

Tips

history

From Li Ruzhen's Qing-dynasty novel 《镜花缘》 (Flowers in the Mirror), chapter 40: 二人摸不着头脑，又不敢违拗 — two characters can't make sense of an order but don't dare disobey. The literal image: grasping for an animal's head and finding nothing.

grammar

The structure 摸 + 不 + 着 (bù zháo) is a potential complement: 'unable to touch/reach.' 摸得着 would be the positive form ('able to grasp it'). This is a colloquial idiom — 头脑 (head/brain) stands for 'the point of the matter.'

Stroke Order

摸 mō

不 bù

着 zhe

头 tóu

脑 nǎo