noun #15,710

Meanings

  1. 1 disease; illness; ailment
  2. 2 swift; rapid
  3. 3 to hate; to envy

Examples

Yùfáng jíbìng hěn zhòngyào.
Preventing disease is very important.
Jífēngzhījìncǎo.
Strong winds reveal sturdy grass. (Adversity tests character.)

Tips

usage
疾病 (jíbìng) = disease, 残疾 (cánjí) = disability, 疾驰 (jíchí) = to gallop. Note the radical for illness.

Components

radical
sickness; illness (radical)
Sickness radical — a person lying on a bed pushed onto its side. The indexing radical, putting in the disease family alongside illness, pain, epidemic. All diseases live inside this leaning-bed frame.
semantic
shǐ
arrow
Inside — pictograph of an arrow with feathered tail. Combined with the sickness frame it gives the original meaning "wound from an arrow" — an acute, sudden injury. From there came both "rapid, swift" ( run fast, 疾驰 speed) and "disease, ailment" (疾病 illness).

Stroke Order