臆 (yì) · chest; breast

Meanings

1 chest; breast
2 subjective; one's own conjecture

Characters

臆

yì

chest; subjective conjecture

Examples

HSK 5

不能光凭主观臆测就下结论。

Bùnéng guāng píng zhǔguān yì cè jiù xià jiélùn.

You can't draw conclusions just from subjective guesswork without evidence.

HSK 6

他的判断纯属臆断，毫无事实依据。

Tā de pànduàn chúnshǔ yì duàn, háowú shìshí yījù.

His judgment was purely subjective conjecture, with no facts to back it up.

Tips

usage

臆 originally meant the chest, then extended to inner feelings and, most commonly today, baseless subjective guessing: 臆测 (to conjecture) and 臆断 (an arbitrary judgment).

Components

radical

⺼ ròu

meat; flesh (radical form)

Left-side meat-flesh radical, the side form of 肉, visually like 月 but distinct. It marks 臆 as a body part, originally the chest, alongside 胸.

phonetic

意 yì

idea; thought

Right side 意 (thought, idea) gives the sound yì exactly. Its meaning also feeds the modern sense: the chest as the seat of one's private thoughts and guesses.