楣 (méi): lintel

Meanings

1 lintel
2 crossbeam above a door or window
3 (in compounds) bad luck

Characters

楣

méi

lintel; crossbeam above a door

Examples

他最近真是倒楣，什么事都不顺。

Tā zuìjìn zhēnshì dǎoméi, shénme shì dōu bù shùn.

He's really been unlucky lately — nothing is going right.

门楣上刻着一副对联。

Mén méi shàng kè zhe yī fù duìlián.

A couplet is carved into the lintel above the door.

Tips

memory

楣 by itself means 'lintel' (the beam over a door). In 倒楣 (dǎoméi — to be unlucky), the character is combined with 倒 (to fall/topple). Imagine the beam above the door collapsing — that's bad luck! Note: 楣 is sometimes written 霉 (mold) in 倒霉, the more common variant.

Components

radical

木 mù

tree; wood

Wood on the left points to a wooden architectural piece. A 楣 is the timber lintel set above a doorway, so the tree radical is literal — it groups the character with other carpentry terms like 梁 beam, 柱 pillar and 框 frame.

phonetic

眉 méi

eyebrow

Supplies the sound méi unchanged and doubles as a vivid mnemonic: a lintel sits over a door the way an eyebrow sits over an eye. The folk image of 倒霉 bad luck (literally drooping eyebrow / lintel) plays on exactly this pun.