鄙 (bǐ): to despise

Meanings

1 to despise
2 to scorn
3 vulgar; low; base
4 my; mine

Characters

鄙

bǐ

despise; vulgar; (humble) my

Examples

他鄙视那些撒谎的人。

Tā bǐshì nàxiē sāhuǎng de rén.

He despises people who lie.

鄙人不才，无法胜任。

Bǐrén bù cái, wúfǎ shèngrèn.

I (humble) lack the talent and cannot take on this task.

这种行为太鄙陋了。

Zhèzhǒng xíngwéi tài bǐ lòu le.

This kind of behavior is too crude.

Tips

usage

Mostly bound - rarely stands alone in modern Chinese. You'll see it in 鄙视 (to despise), 鄙夷 (disdain), 卑鄙 (despicable), and humble self-references like 鄙人 (yours truly) or 鄙见 (my humble view).

history

Originally meant 'rural border district' in the Zhou dynasty (五百家为鄙 - '500 households make a 鄙'). The 'lowly/crude' meaning came from contempt for rural outskirts vs. the capital.

Components

radical

阝 yì

city (radical form of 邑, right-side)

Right city radical - the indexing radical in its right-side ear form (always 邑 'city', distinct from the left-side ear which is 阜 'mound'). Marks 鄙 as a place name or settlement type. Anchors it with 都 (capital), 郊 (suburb), 邻 (neighbour), 部 (district).

phonetic

啚 bǐ

remote outlying area

Left 11 strokes form 啚 - an ancient graph of a grain store outside the city walls, the prototypical 'outpost / frontier village.' Supplies the sound bǐ directly and carries the whole semantic core: a backwater region. From 'remote rural place' came the figurative 'crude, vulgar, lowly,' and finally the verb 'to look down on' (鄙视).