脆

cuì

crisp; fragile, frail; brittle

Meaning

  • Physical: Brittle or frail; specifically a hardness that lacks elasticity and snaps rather than bends under pressure.
  • Auditory/Sensory: Sharp, clear, and brief sounds (e.g., a "crisp" voice), characterized by a lack of residue or lingering.
  • Psychological: A lack of resilience; a tendency to collapse suddenly once a limit is reached.

Distinctions

  • Contrast with 弱 (ruò): While 弱 implies softness or general weakness, 脆 specifically denotes hardness without flexibility.
  • Contrast with 碎 (suì): 脆 refers to the inherent property of brittleness, whereas 碎 refers to the resulting state of being shattered or broken into pieces.

History and forms

  • Variants: Semantic variant U+8103 occurs in specific manuscript traditions.
  • Phonetics: The reading has remained stable from the Tang period (tsiuɛ̀i) through to modern Mandarin (cuì).

Decontextualized translator aid. This page describes plausible lexical range; it does not choose what the glyph means in a particular passage.