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塞

sāi / sài / sè
verb HSK 6 #1,601

Meanings

  1. 1 to plug; to stuff; to block up
  2. 2 to squeeze in; to cram
  3. 3 stopper; cork; plug

Examples

HSK 2
别再往书包里塞东西了。
Bié zài wǎng shūbāo lǐ sāi dōngxi le.
Stop stuffing things into the backpack.
HSK 3
把瓶口塞住。
Bǎ píngkǒu sāi zhù.
Plug up the bottle opening.
HSK 5
她悄悄把红包塞给了护士。
Tā qiāoqiāo bǎ hóngbāo sāi gěi le hùshi.
She quietly slipped a red envelope into the nurse’s hand.

Tips

usage
塞 has three readings: sāi for everyday stuffing and plugging (塞车, 塞子, 耳塞); sài for frontier fortress (要塞, 塞翁失马); sè for literary block (堵塞, 敷衍塞责). sāi is by far the most common in speech.
register
塞车 (traffic jam) is the standard term in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and southern Mandarin; northern speakers usually say 堵车 instead. Both are understood everywhere but mark regional flavor.

Components

radical
土 tǔ
earth; ground
Bottom earth radical - the indexing radical. Earth is the floor of the container, the foundation that makes the stuffing possible. Also grounds the alternate sài reading (要塞 frontier fortress) - an earthwork blocking a strategic pass. Same family: 堵 block, 填 fill in, 埋 bury.
semantic
宀 mián
roof; cover
Top roof radical 宀 - sets the enclosed-space scene. Plugging and stuffing happen inside something: a bottle, a bag, a doorway, a fortress. The roof on top of 塞 marks the bounded interior into which things get crammed. The whole char is indexed under Kangxi #32 土 - the soil at the base.
semantic
工 gōng
work; tool (here graphic)
Middle 7-stroke unit - visually a 工 fused with two pairs of crossing strokes, originally a graph of bricks packed tightly between supports. Standalone 工 is 3 strokes; here it has absorbed the bundling pattern into a single fused unit. The picture: stuff jammed between roof and earth - the 'cramming, stuffing, blocking' core.

Stroke Order

塞 sāi