懵 (měng) · confused, dazed, bewildered

Meanings

1 confused
2 dazed
3 bewildered
4 stupefied

Characters

懵

měng

confused, stupefied

Examples

HSK 4

听到这个消息，他一下子懵了。

Tīngdào zhège xiāoxi, tā yíxiàzi měng le.

Hearing the news, he was immediately dazed.

HSK 6

考试题太难了，我脑子一片懵。

Kǎoshì tí tài nán le, wǒ nǎozi yípiàn měng.

The exam questions were too hard; my mind went completely blank.

Tips

register

懵 is very colloquial and commonly used in modern spoken Chinese and internet slang. 懵逼 (měng bī) is a cruder slang variant meaning completely dumbfounded (vulgar).

Components

radical

忄 xīn

heart; mind

忄 is the left-side compressed form of 心, the indexing heart-mind radical. It tags 懵 as a state-of-mind word - a foggy, dazed mental condition - alongside relatives like 怕 (fear), 忙 (busy-minded), 悔 (regret). The radical situates the haze inside the head, not the eyes.

phonetic

瞢 méng

dim-eyed; blurred

瞢 (méng) supplies the sound and a rich semantic flavour - it depicts dim eyes that cannot see clearly (note the 目 at its base). Together with 忄 the compound paints a perfectly ambiguous picture: mentally dim, eyes-glazed-over, the classic 懵了 dazed-and-confused state.