闷 (mèn): bored; depressed; melancholy

Meanings

1 bored; depressed; melancholy
2 sealed; airtight; tightly closed

Characters

闷

mèn

bored; depressed; sealed

Examples

HSK 1

他一个人在家，觉得很闷。

Tā yīgè rén zài jiā, juéde hěn mèn.

He was home alone and felt bored.

HSK 5

她一整天都闷闷不乐，肯定出了什么事。

Tā yīzhěngtiān dōu mènmènbùlè, kěndìng chū le shénme shì.

She's been gloomy all day - something must have happened.

Tips

usage

Default reading mèn covers the emotional / sealed-up senses: bored, depressed, gloomy, taciturn, hermetically closed. Showpiece compounds: 郁闷 (gloomy / depressed), 纳闷 (puzzled), 闷闷不乐 (in low spirits), 苦闷 (dejected), 生闷气 (to sulk).

register

A second reading 闷 (first tone) is the physical 'stuffy / muggy' word - the room is hot and airless, the lid is on tight. Most common in 闷热 (sultry, hot and stuffy), 闷头 (head-down, silently absorbed in something), 闷声 (quietly, without a word), 闷骚 (outwardly reserved but inwardly passionate). Rule of thumb: if the word is about temperature / airlessness / silence-on-the-outside, it's mēn; if it's about a sad or trapped feeling, it's mèn.

Components

radical

门 mén

door; gate

Outer indexing gate radical - the heart 心 sealed inside the closed gate, perfectly picturing 'shut up, no air, no exit'. Stuffiness, depression, boredom: all states of being closed in. One of the script's most expressive emotion-glyphs - a heart locked behind a door.

semantic

心 xīn

heart

Inner heart radical (here in non-indexing role) - supplies the emotion semantics. Sealed inside the gate, the heart cannot breathe (depression), cannot ventilate (stuffiness), cannot move (boredom). The traditional 悶 keeps the same compositional logic; the heart-inside-gate metaphor is fully transparent.