腻 (nì): greasy; oily

Meanings

1 greasy; oily
2 fed up; sick of; tired of
3 meticulous; detailed

Characters

腻

nì

greasy; tired of

Examples

这道菜太腻了。

Zhè dào cài tài nì le.

This dish is too greasy.

我吃腻了外卖。

Wǒ chī nì le wàimài.

I'm sick of eating takeout.

她做事很细腻。

Tā zuòshì hěn xìnì.

She does things very meticulously.

Tips

usage

腻 has two common patterns: 太腻了 (too greasy/rich) for food, and verb + 腻了 (sick of doing something) for boredom. 细腻 (xìnì) means 'delicate/refined' — a positive meaning.

mistakes

Don't confuse 腻 (nì, greasy/fed up) with 逆 (nì, reverse/against). Same pronunciation, very different meanings.

Components

radical

⺼ ròu

meat; flesh (radical form)

Left meat-flesh radical — the side-form of 肉 (visually identical to 月 moon but a different unicode glyph). It indexes 腻 in the body/anatomy/cooking family with 脏 organ, 脂 fat, 肥 plump, 油 oil. Greasiness is fundamentally about animal fat, so the meat radical is doing literal semantic work.

phonetic

贰 èr

two (formal); here phonetic

Right 贰 supplies the sound. The traditional form 膩 had 貳 here, an older phonetic that drifted to nì. Modern 贰 keeps the same role but the sound link looks far at first glance. Used purely for pronunciation — no semantic contribution from the 'two' meaning.