痴 (chī): infatuated; obsessed; crazy abo…

Meanings

1 infatuated; obsessed; crazy about
2 foolish; silly; idiotic

Characters

痴

chī

infatuated; obsessed; foolish

Examples

他对她痴心不改。

Tā duì tā chīxīn bù gǎi.

He remains infatuated with her and won't change his mind.

她是一个音乐痴。

Tā shì yīgè yīnyuè chī.

She is a music fanatic.

别犯痴了，醒醒吧。

Bié fàn chī le, xǐng xǐng ba.

Stop being foolish, wake up.

Tips

usage

痴 is a bound morpheme that appears in many compounds: 痴迷 (chīmí, obsessed), 痴心 (chīxīn, infatuated), 痴呆 (chīdāi, dementia), 花痴 (huāchī, boy/girl crazy). As a suffix, X痴 means 'X fanatic' — 书痴 (book nerd), 情痴 (hopeless romantic).

history

In Buddhism, 痴 (chī) is one of the Three Poisons (三毒: 贪嗔痴 — greed, anger, ignorance). It represents delusion or ignorance that prevents enlightenment.

Components

radical

疒 nè

sickness (radical form)

Upper-left sickness radical, five strokes depicting a person leaning against a bed. Anchors 痴 as a mental affliction — 痴 originally named foolishness as an illness of the mind, then softened into 'silly, infatuated, obsessed.' Same family of mind-state ailments: 疯 (mad), 疾 (illness), 痛 (pain), 疲 (weary).

phonetic

知 zhī

to know (here phonetic)

Inside 知 supplies the sound — zhī drifting to chī through zh/ch palatalisation. Originally an arrow-and-mouth picture: 'words sharp as an arrow,' meaning knowledge. The irony is tight — knowing inside sickness gives one whose knowledge has gone wrong: dim-witted, obsessed, lovesick.