verb #9,787

Meanings

  1. 1 to bend
  2. 2 to yield
  3. 3 to submit
  4. 4 injustice; wrong

Examples

Tā nìngsǐbùqū.
He would rather die than yield.
Tā shòu le hěn dà de wěiqu.
She suffered a great injustice.
Bùyào qūfú yú yālì.
Don't yield to pressure.

Tips

usage
rarely stands alone in modern Chinese. Common compounds: 屈服 (submit), 委屈 (feel wronged), 冤屈 (injustice), 不屈 (unyielding).

Components

radical
shī
body; corpse (radical)
Top-left body radical, originally depicting a person seated with knees drawn up — the same posture used in ancient Chinese mourning rites, which is how the radical also came to mean 'corpse.' Here it gives the bent, crouching human figure that the rest of the character bends further. Family: reside, office, layer.
phonetic
chū
to come out; emerge
Bottom right — two mountains stacked, picturing something emerging upward. Supplies the sound chū → qū. Faintly semantic too: to is to be pushed back when you tried to , that is, forced to yield instead of advance. Strict etymology calls purely phonetic, but the visual reinforcement is a useful learner hook.

In Pop Culture

屈原 Qūyuán
Qu Yuan
ancient poet — Dragon Boat Festival honors his death

Stroke Order