verb

Meanings

  1. 1 (literary) to collapse; to fall into ruin
  2. 2 (literary) to destroy; to ruin

Examples

Zhànluàn duōnián, chéngqiáng yǐ pǐ.
After years of war the city walls had fallen into ruin.

Tips

register
is literary and archaic, meaning a wall or building collapsing into ruin. In modern Chinese use 倒塌 or 毁坏 appears only in classical texts and set phrases.

Components

radical
earth; soil
The (earth) radical on the left points to earthen structures — walls, mounds, embankments — that collapse. It groups with other ground-and-building words like and .
phonetic
self; the 6th heavenly stem
Right side is the sound element; the reading shifted from jǐ to pǐ. It carries no 'self' meaning here. The same phonetic also drives and .

Stroke Order