guǐ
adjective #39,190

Meanings

  1. 1 sly; crafty; deceitful
  2. 2 weird; bizarre

Examples

Tā de xiàoróng guǐyì, ràng rén bù'ān.
His smile was strangely sinister and made people uneasy.
Dírén yòng le guǐjì, dǎ le wǒmen yí gè cuòshǒubùjí.
The enemy used a cunning scheme that caught us off guard.

Tips

usage
Two senses: cunning and deceitful in 诡计 (a sly scheme), and strange or eerie in 诡异 (bizarre) and 诡秘 (mysterious, secretive).

Components

radical
yán
speech; words
The left-side speech radical, compressed form of . Deceit and trickery are carried out through misleading words, so the speech radical anchors the crafty sense of .
phonetic
wēi
danger
Supplies the sound; wēi shifted to guǐ. The danger meaning is not part of the word, only the reading, though a cunning trap being dangerous makes a handy mnemonic.

Stroke Order

guǐ