堆砌

duīqì

verb HSK 7 #38,955

Meanings

1 to pile up; to stack
2 to pad (writing) with excessive words or rhetoric

Characters

to pile up; heap

to build by laying bricks/stones

堆 is loose piling, 砌 is careful stacking of bricks. Together, the word can mean literal stacking or figurative over-accumulation.

Examples

工人们在堆砌砖墙。

Gōngrénmen zài duīqì zhuānqiáng.

The workers are stacking bricks to build a wall.

这篇文章只是辞藻的堆砌，没有实质内容。

Zhè piān wénzhāng zhǐshì cízǎo de duīqì, méiyǒu shízhì nèiróng.

This article is just a pile of fancy words with no real substance.

Tips

usage

In literary criticism, 堆砌 is almost always negative — it means piling on flowery language or data without purpose. 辞藻堆砌 (excessive rhetoric) is a common criticism of bad writing.

Stroke Order

堆 duī

砌 qì