noun #24,176

Meanings

  1. 1 ruffian
  2. 2 scoundrel
  3. 3 hooligan
  4. 4 lump in the abdomen (medical)

Examples

Tā shì gè dìpǐ, zài jiēshàng rěshìshēngfēi.
He is a local ruffian who causes trouble on the street.
Zhège pǐzi gēnběn bù jiǎng dàolǐ.
This scoundrel is completely unreasonable.

Tips

usage
is often used in compounds: 地痞 (local thug), 痞子 (ruffian, scoundrel), 流氓痞子 (hooligan). The character originally referred to a medical condition (abdominal mass), but the colloquial meaning of ruffian is now dominant in everyday use.

Components

radical
sickness; ailment
pictures a person leaning against a sickbed. As radical it marks with its older medical sense — a hard lump or obstruction in the abdomen — before the slang sense of ruffian took over. Same radical in , , , .
phonetic
fǒu
not; negate
fǒu/pǐ supplies the sound — has a second reading pǐ meaning blocked or stuck, which picks up directly. Shared phonetic across and (pǐ) gives a tidy memory hook: blocked breath becomes blocked gut.

Stroke Order