nǎi
adverb HSK 7-9 #8,612

Meanings

  1. 1 to be (literary)
  2. 2 thus
  3. 3 so; therefore

Examples

Shībài nǎi chénggōng zhī mǔ.
Failure is the mother of success.
Cǐ nǎi tiānyì.
This is the will of heaven.

Tips

register
is a literary/classical Chinese word meaning "is" or "therefore." It appears in proverbs and formal writing but is rarely used in everyday spoken Chinese.

Components

radical
丿 piě
left-falling stroke
The trailing left-falling 丿 stroke is the indexing Kangxi radical for . It groups with other cursive 丿-radical entries (, , ) where the dictionary-lookup anchor is a single sweeping diagonal at the end of a fused glyph.
pictograph
nǎi
then; thereupon; thus
Originally a pictograph traditionally read as depicting a woman's breast in profile, later reused for the function-word meaning 'thereupon'. The 2-stroke silhouette is too fused to split into independent named pieces beyond exposing the indexing radical.

Stroke Order

nǎi