p8nda
p8nda BETA
Home Dictionary Translate Flashcards Sign in

塞

sài / sāi / sè
noun #1,601

Meanings

  1. 1 frontier fortress; strategic stronghold
  2. 2 pass; border outpost

Examples

塞翁失马。
Sàiwēngshīmǎ.
An old man at the frontier lost his horse.
将军守了这座要塞十年。
Jiāngjūn shǒu le zhè zuò yàosài shínián.
The general defended this fortress for ten years.
塞北的秋色与众不同。
Sài běi de qiūsè yǔzhòngbùtóng.
North of the frontier the autumn scenery is unlike anywhere else.

Tips

history
The sài reading is the classical military sense: a fortified earthwork blocking a mountain pass. 塞外 (beyond the frontier) and 塞北 historically meant the lands north of the Great Wall — Mongol and Xiongnu territory. Tang frontier poetry made the word evocative of exile, cold winds, and distance from the capital.
memory
Same character, different stakes: cram a cork into a bottle = sāi; cram a wall of soldiers into a mountain pass = sài. Foreign country names that pick 塞 for the syllable 'sai' inherit this reading: 塞尔维亚 (Serbia), 塞内加尔 (Senegal), 塞浦路斯 (Cyprus).

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 sài