verb #23,238

Meanings

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

Examples

HSK 6
Tā de xíngwéi shì duì fǎlǜ de xièdú.
His behavior was a desecration of the law.
HSK 7-9
Xièdú shénmíng shì bù bèi yǔnxǔ de xíngwéi.
Blasphemy against the gods is not permitted.

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
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