馁

餒
něi
#4,150 most
frequent character
(bound form) hungry, starving

Character breakdown

Source: Make Me a Hanzi.

馁 uses 饣 food as its meaning part and 妥 tuǒ for sound. It first meant hungry. This grew to famished and then discouraged. The sound link is not clear in Mandarin.

Ask DeepSeek

Homophones

哪něi
which? (interrogative, followed by classifier or numeral-classifier)

Your word lists

Sign in to add this word to your private lists.