泥 (ní): mud; clay; mire

Meanings

1 mud; clay; mire
2 paste; mashed substance

Characters

泥

ní

mud; clay

氵 (water) + 尼 (phonetic) — wet earth.

Examples

下雨后路上全是泥。

Xiàyǔ hòu lù shàng quán shì ní.

The road was covered in mud after the rain.

孩子们在玩泥巴。

Háizimen zài wán níba.

The children are playing with mud.

这种泥土很适合种花。

Zhè zhǒng nítǔ hěn shìhé zhòng huā.

This kind of soil is great for planting flowers.

Tips

usage

ní covers all the everyday senses — mud, clay, sludge, and by extension any paste-like substance: 土豆泥 (mashed potatoes), 枣泥 (date paste), 蒜泥 (garlic paste). 泥巴 is the colloquial word for mud.

memory

Water radical 氵 + 尼 (phonetic). Wet earth = mud — a clean phono-semantic compound.

register

ní is by far the dominant reading. The character has a second reading nì used in a small set of fixed compounds — see 拘泥 (to rigidly adhere) and 泥古 (to stick to ancient ways). When you see 泥 followed by an abstract concept rather than a physical substance, suspect nì.

Components

radical

氵 shuǐ

water (radical form)

Left water radical (the contracted three-drop form of 水) — the indexing radical and meaning anchor. Mud is wet earth, the substance that forms when water meets soil. The radical correctly tags 泥 in the water family even though the result is half-solid: water is what makes mud mud.

phonetic

尼 ní

Buddhist nun

Right phonetic 尼 — exact tonal match (ní). 尼 itself means a Buddhist nun, but here is purely phonetic with no semantic role. Same sound family as 妮 (girl), 呢 (particle). A clean phono-semantic compound: water + ní-sound = ní (mud).