verb #23,238

Meanings

  1. 1 to desecrate
  2. 2 to profane
  3. 3 to show disrespect toward
  4. 4 (literary) ditch; waterway

Examples

Xièdú shénmíng shì bù bèi yǔnxǔ de xíngwéi.
Blasphemy against the gods is not permitted.
Tā de xíngwéi shì duì fǎlǜ de xièdú.
His behavior was a desecration of the law.

Tips

usage
by itself is rarely used alone in modern Chinese. It almost always appears in compounds: 亵渎 (to blaspheme/desecrate), 渎职 (dereliction of duty), 冒渎 (to disrespect). The standalone in the literary sense of 'ditch' is archaic.
memory
The character has the water radical (indicating the original 'waterway/ditch' meaning) plus (to sell) — something once pure, now debased — giving the sense of desecration.

Components

radical
shuǐ
water (radical form of 水)
Left water radical — side-form of drawn as three slanted drops. As the indexing radical it preserves the older literary sense of : a ditch, drain, or watercourse. The 'desecrate, profane' senses are metaphorical — flowing into something casually. Same family: ditch, river, to flow.
phonetic
mài
to sell (here phonetic)
Right supplies the sound — the simplified shape stands in for an older phonetic that carried the dú reading. Same phonetic frames to read, continue, wooden tablet, all in the dú/xù family. Borrowed purely for pronunciation.

Stroke Order