衰 (shuāi): to decline

Meanings

1 to decline
2 to wane
3 weak
4 unlucky (colloquial)

Characters

衰

shuāi

decline; wane

Examples

他最近真衰，什么事都不顺。

Tā zuìjìn zhēn shuāi, shénme shì dōu bú shùn.

He's been really unlucky lately, nothing goes well.

国力逐渐衰落。

Guó lì zhújiàn shuāiluò.

The national strength gradually declined.

Tips

usage

In formal Chinese, 衰 means to decline or weaken. In colloquial speech (especially Taiwanese Mandarin), it means unlucky or having bad luck.

Components

radical

衣 yī

clothing; garment

The 衣 'clothing' radical wraps the outside of 衰 — top strokes form the collar, bottom strokes form the hem and dangling sleeves of a garment. It is the indexing radical and gives 衰 its concrete origin: a mourning robe of coarse fibre, woven from straw, with frayed strands inside. Same garment-wrap appears in 表 outer, 衷 inner, 哀 grief.

semantic

口 kǒu

mouth; opening (here a knot or weave-cell)

Inside-upper is a small square — historically not a mouth but a knot or woven cell in the coarse mourning-robe pattern. It sits trapped within the garment wrap. Together the layered image is a robe whose weave is loose enough to fall apart — the visible decay that gives 衰 its meaning of decline and weakening.

ideograph

一 yī

horizontal stroke; line

The horizontal line cutting through the middle represents one of the dangling fringes of straw inside the mourning robe — a strand crossing the weave-cell. It is positional rather than literally 'the number one'. From this image of a frayed, decaying garment grew every modern sense: declining, weakening, and the colloquial Taiwanese 'unlucky' usage.