睡

shuì
verb HSK 1 #425

Meanings

  1. 1 to sleep

Characters

Eye radical 目 on the left - when you sleep, you close your eyes

Examples

HSK 1
Wǒ xiǎng shuì le.
I want to sleep.
HSK 2
Háizi yǐjīng shuìzháo le.
The child has already fallen asleep.
HSK 3
Nǐ shuì le duōjiǔ?
How long did you sleep?

Tips

memory
睡 contains the eye radical 目 on the left - when you sleep, you close your eyes.

Components

radical
目 mù
eye
Left eye radical, a vertical pictograph of an eye (originally drawn horizontally, then rotated). It supplies the meaning: an action involving the eyes, here their closing. 睡 is the eyelids drooping shut - sleep as an eye-event rather than a body-event. The radical anchors the seeing-and-watching family: 看, 眼, 睛, 盯, 瞧, 眠.
semantic
垂 chuí
to droop; hang down
Right 垂 means 'to hang down, droop' - drawn as branches drooping from a tree. Combined with the eye on the left, the whole forms a compound ideograph: drooping eyelids, the visible image of falling asleep. 垂 is semantic here, not phonetic - chuí does not match shuì, though they are graphically close. Same family: 唾, 锤, 陲.

Stroke Order

睡 shuì