腻 (nì) · greasy; oily

Meanings

1 greasy; oily
2 fed up; sick of; tired of
3 meticulous; detailed

Characters

腻

nì

greasy; tired of

Examples

HSK 3

我吃腻了外卖。

Wǒ chī nì le wàimài.

I'm sick of eating takeout.

HSK 4

这道菜太腻了。

Zhè dào cài tài nì le.

This dish is too greasy.

HSK 4

她做事很细腻。

Tā zuòshì hěn xìnì.

She does things very meticulously.

Tips

usage

腻 has two common patterns: 太腻了 (too greasy/rich) for food, and verb + 腻了 (sick of doing something) for boredom. 细腻 means 'delicate/refined' - a positive meaning.

mistakes

Don't confuse 腻 (greasy/fed up) with 逆 (reverse/against). Same pronunciation, very different meanings.

Components

radical

⺼ ròu

meat; flesh

Left meat-flesh radical - the side-form of 肉 (visually identical to 月 moon but a different unicode glyph). It indexes 腻 in the body/anatomy/cooking family with 脏 organ, 脂 fat, 肥 plump, 油 oil. Greasiness is fundamentally about animal fat, so the meat radical is doing literal semantic work.

phonetic

贰 èr

two (formal)

Right 贰 supplies the sound. The traditional form 膩 had 貳 here, an older phonetic that drifted to nì. Modern 贰 keeps the same role but the sound link looks far at first glance. Used purely for pronunciation - no semantic contribution from the 'two' meaning.