畸

jī
adjective #25,921

Meanings

  1. 1 lopsided
  2. 2 unbalanced
  3. 3 abnormal
  4. 4 irregular
  5. 5 odd (fractional remainder)

Examples

HSK 5
Zhè kuài dì xíngzhuàng jī, hěn nán jiànshè.
This piece of land is oddly shaped and difficult to build on.
HSK 5
Shèhuì fāzhǎn jīxíng huì dǎozhì hěnduō wèntí.
Lopsided social development leads to many problems.

Tips

usage
畸 often appears in compound words: 畸形 (abnormal/deformed), 畸变 (distortion), 畸重畸轻 (unbalanced). Alone it is rarely used in modern speech.

Components

radical
田 tián
field
Field radical on the left - divided plot of farmland, grid of paths between paddies. Carries the original meaning of 畸: an irregular, oddly-shaped scrap of land that wouldn't fit the regular 井-grid of state-allotted fields. From that odd leftover plot came the modern senses of lopsided, abnormal, freakish. Family: 略, 畔, 畴.
phonetic
奇 qí
strange; odd
Right side 奇 supplies the sound - qí shifting to jī, a q/j palatal alternation. 奇 also reinforces meaning: it already means strange, odd, unusual on its own, so it does double duty as both phonetic and semantic anchor for the irregular, abnormal sense of 畸. One of the cases where the phonetic accidentally lands exactly on the meaning.

Stroke Order

畸 jī