隙 (xì): crack

Meanings

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

Characters

隙

xì

crack / gap / rift

Examples

HSK 7-9

阳光透过墙壁的隙缝照进来。

Yángguāng tòuguò qiángbì de xìfèng zhào jìnlái.

Sunlight shone in through the cracks in the wall.

HSK 7-9

他们之间产生了嫌隙，关系日渐疏远。

Tāmen zhījiān chǎnshēng le xiánxì, guānxi rìjiàn shūyuǎn.

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

HSK 7-9

敌军趁隙进攻，打了我们一个措手不及。

Díjūn chèn xì jìngōng, dǎ le wǒmen yī gè cuòshǒu-bùjí.

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 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.