隙 (xì): crack

Meanings

1 crack
2 crevice
3 gap
4 rift
5 loophole
6 discord

Characters

隙

xì

crack / gap / rift (single-character classical word)

Examples

阳光透过墙壁的隙缝照进来。

Yángguāng tòuguò qiángbì de xì fèng zhào jìnlái.

Sunlight shone in through the cracks in the wall.

他们之间产生了嫌隙，关系日渐疏远。

Tāmen zhījiān chǎnshēng le xián xì, guānxi rìjiàn shūyuǎn.

A rift developed between them and their relationship grew increasingly distant.

敌军趁隙进攻，打了我们一个措手不及。

Díjūn chèn xì jìngōng, dǎ le wǒmen yīgè cuòshǒubùjí.

The enemy seized the gap to attack, catching us completely off guard.

Tips

register

隙 is a classical/literary character. In modern speech it usually appears in compounds: 间隙 (gap/interval), 空隙 (gap/opening), 嫌隙 (rift/grudge), 裂隙 (fissure). Rarely used alone in modern colloquial speech.

memory

Picture the radical 阝(hill/mound) with 小 (small) — a small gap in the hillside.

Components

radical

阝 fù

mound; wall (left-side form of 阜)

Mound/wall radical on the left — the side-form of 阜, the indexing radical. A crack is something that opens up in a wall or earthwork, so the radical does literal work: the gap is in the brick or earth surface that this radical pictures. Same family: 陡 (steep), 障 (barrier), 隔 (partition).

semantic

小 xiǎo

small

Upper-right 小 — small. Sits at the top of the right-side stack, contributing the 'tiny, slight' sense to a crack. The traditional analysis pairs it with the 日 below and the 小 below that to show light shrinking down through narrow openings. Pure semantic addition; no sound.

semantic

日 rì

sun; light

Middle 日 — sunlight squeezing through. The classical reading of 隙 is 'light glimpsed through a chink in a wall.' The 日 sandwiched between two 小 components delivers exactly that picture: a slender ray of daylight peeking between two narrowed slits.

semantic

小 xiǎo

small

Lower-right 小 — a second small. The doubling reinforces the narrowness; the picture is light pinched between two slivers of darkness. Together with the upper 小 it brackets the 日, framing the daylight in a tiny aperture — the very image of a 'crack, crevice, fleeting opening' in time or material.