泥 (nì): to be stuck on; to rigidly clin…

Meanings

1 to be stuck on; to rigidly cling to
2 to plaster; to fill in (with putty or paste)

Characters

泥

nì

to be stuck on; to rigidly cling to

Examples

做事不要拘泥于形式。

Zuòshì búyào jūnì yú xíngshì.

Don't be a stickler for form when doing things.

他过于泥古，难以接受新事物。

Tā guòyú nìgǔ, nányǐ jiēshòu xīn shìwù.

He clings to old ways too much to accept anything new.

Tips

register

nì is the figurative, literary reading: to be stuck on something, to cling to it inflexibly. The image is mud-as-glue — mental mud rather than physical mud. Mainly seen in 拘泥 (to rigidly adhere to formalities) and 泥古 (to stick to ancient ways), both of which carry a critical tone.

mistakes

Don't read 拘泥 as jūní or 泥古 as nígǔ — the second-tone everyday reading is wrong here. When 泥 means 'cling to / be stuck in (mentally)', it switches to nì (fourth tone).

Components

radical

氵 shuǐ

water (radical form)

Same water radical as the ní reading. The figurative 'stuck in mental mud' sense rides directly on the physical-mud image — sticky, gluey, hard to pull free of.

phonetic

尼 ní

Buddhist nun (here phonetic)

Phonetic 尼 — for this reading the tone shifts from second to fourth: ní → nì. The graph is the same as the everyday mud reading; only the tone distinguishes the figurative 'cling to' sense from the literal 'mud' sense.