verb #63,289

Meanings

  1. 1 to quarrel; to feud (especially between brothers)

Examples

Xiōngdì xì yú qiáng, wài yù qí wǔ.
Brothers may quarrel at home, yet together they fend off outside insult.
Liǎng pài zài gōngsī nèibù xì zhēng bùduàn.
The two factions feuded endlessly within the company.

Tips

history
means to quarrel, and survives almost entirely in the 《诗经》 phrase 兄弟 — brothers feud at home but unite against an outside threat. The idiom 阋墙 still names internal strife within a family or group.

Components

radical
mén
door; (here) fighting frame
The outer wrapper. The traditional form used the 'fight' frame; the simplified character reuses the door shape as its indexing radical, enclosing the inner part the way a doorway frames what stands inside it.
phonetic
ér
child (phonetic)
The inner part, the traditional form of (child). In the original character it pointed to a quarrelsome figure; in modern use it works mainly as the sound element, the reading having shifted to xì.

Stroke Order