隐 (yǐn): hidden

Meanings

1 hidden
2 secret
3 to conceal

Characters

隐

yǐn

hidden; secret

Examples

他对朋友隐藏了真实身份。

Tā duì péngyou yǐncáng le zhēnshí shēnfèn.

He hides his true identity from his friends.

请尊重我的隐私。

Qǐng zūnzhòng wǒ de yǐnsī.

Please respect my privacy.

我隐约听到远处有人唱歌。

Wǒ yǐnyuē tīngdào yuǎnchù yǒurén chànggē.

I can faintly hear someone singing in the distance.

Tips

memory

阝 (hill) + the right-side phonetic - picture hiding behind a hill. Appears in many compounds: 隐藏 (to hide), 隐私 (privacy), 隐约 (faintly).

Components

radical

阝 fù

mound; hill (left-side form of 阜)

Left-side 阝 is the mound radical (from 阜) - distinct from the right-side city-阝. It marks features of high ground: things behind hills, things obscured by terrain. 隐 means hidden, and that hiddenness is anchored by the blocking hill. Family: 阴 shaded, 险 slope, 障 obstacle.

phonetic

急 jí

urgent

急 supplies the sound - jí drifting to yǐn, a wide phonetic shift reflecting older Chinese readings of this graph. The picture of an anxious heart 心 underneath has no clear semantic role here; the borrowing is purely for sound, matching the original full form 隱.