垒 (lěi) · base (in baseball), rampart, fortress

Meanings

1 base (in baseball)
2 rampart
3 fortress
4 to pile up

Characters

垒

lěi

base; rampart; to pile up

Examples

HSK 2

他跑到了二垒。

Tā pǎo dào le èr lěi.

He ran to second base.

HSK 5

他们用石头垒了一堵墙。

Tāmen yòng shítou lěi le yī dǔ qiáng.

They built a wall by piling up stones.

Tips

usage

In sports contexts, 垒 refers to bases in baseball (一垒, 二垒, 三垒). In other contexts it means to pile or stack things up.

Components

radical

土 tǔ

earth; soil

Bottom indexing earth radical 土 - pictograph of a clod of soil on the ground. Stacking in ancient China meant building earthen ramparts and walls, so the earth radical anchors 垒 in the construction family alongside 城 (wall), 坚 (firm), 堆 (pile), 基 (foundation). The military 'rampart' sense (堡垒 fortress) is the most concrete usage today.

phonetic

厽 lěi

piled stones (here phonetic-semantic)

Top 厽 - three 厶 (private) stacked in a triangle, depicting a heap of stones or earth piled up. Supplies the sound (lěi → lěi, identical) and contributes the meaning of stacking. The traditional 壘 had a four-fold 田 stack instead; the 1956 simplification kept this triangular 厽 form, which is etymologically closer to the original 'heaped' image.