泥 (ní) · mud; clay; mire

Meanings

1 mud; clay; mire
2 paste; mashed substance

Characters

泥

ní

mud; clay

氵 (water) + 尼 (phonetic) - wet earth.

Examples

HSK 3

孩子们在玩泥巴。

Háizimen zài wán níba.

The children are playing with mud.

HSK 4

下雨后路上全是泥。

Xiàyǔ hòu lù shàng quán shì ní.

The road was covered in mud after the rain.

HSK 4

这里的泥土已经被严重污染了。

Zhèlǐ de nítǔ yǐjīng bèi yánzhòng wūrǎn le.

The soil here has already been seriously polluted.

Tips

usage

ní covers all the everyday senses - mud, clay, sludge, and by extension any paste-like substance: 土豆泥 (mashed potatoes), 枣泥 (date paste), 蒜泥 (garlic paste). 泥巴 is the colloquial word for mud.

memory

Water radical 氵 + 尼 (phonetic). Wet earth = mud - a clean phono-semantic compound.

register

ní is by far the dominant reading. The character has a second reading nì used in a small set of fixed compounds - see 拘泥 (to rigidly adhere) and 泥古 (to stick to ancient ways). When you see 泥 followed by an abstract concept rather than a physical substance, suspect nì.

Components

radical

氵 shuǐ

water (radical form)

Left water radical (the contracted three-drop form of 水) - the indexing radical and meaning anchor. Mud is wet earth, the substance that forms when water meets soil. The radical correctly tags 泥 in the water family even though the result is half-solid: water is what makes mud mud.

phonetic

尼 ní

Buddhist nun

Right phonetic 尼 - exact tonal match (ní). 尼 itself means a Buddhist nun, but here is purely phonetic with no semantic role. Same sound family as 妮 (girl), 呢 (particle). A clean phono-semantic compound: water + ní-sound = ní (mud).