lěi
adjective

Meanings

  1. 1 a heap of stones
  2. 2 open and honest; upright (of character)

Examples

HSK 5
Zuòshì lěiluò jiù búpà xiánhuà.
Doing things in an upright way fears no gossip.
HSK 7-9
Tā wéirén guāngmíng-lěiluò, dàjiā dōu xìnrèn tā.
He is an honest and upright man whom everyone trusts.
HSK 7-9
Shānjiǎo xià lěi zhe yì duī jùshí.
Boulders are piled up at the foot of the mountain.

Tips

memory
Three ('stone') stacked into a pile: a heap of solid rocks. From 'rocks plainly stacked in the open' came the figurative 光明磊落 ('frank and upright, nothing hidden').

Components

radical
shí
stone; rock
The single on top is the indexing radical and the first rock of the pile; tripling it expresses 'many stones heaped up'.
semantic
shí
stone; rock
The bottom-left repeats the stone, contributing to the sense of an accumulated mound rather than a single rock.
semantic
shí
stone; rock
The bottom-right completes the triple stack; three of the same component is a common way to write 'a great many', here a pile of stones.

Stroke Order

lěi