脆
Character Story & Explanation
In daily life, 脆 is indispensable in food discourse: chefs praise ‘cui’ texture in dishes like kong pao chicken (where peanuts must be ‘cuì’), and snack packaging proudly declares ‘香脆’ (xiāng cuì, ‘aromatic and crisp’). It appears in HSK-5 vocabulary lists and official language exams, consistently paired with food or materials. Idiomically, ‘脆而不坚’ (cuì ér bù jiān, ‘crisp but not tough’) critiques superficial strength—a phrase documented in 20th-century political essays and still used in business analysis.
The character’s form is not pictographic but phono-semantic: ⺼ (flesh/body radical) + 危 (wēi, ‘precarious’, serving both sound and meaning). No oracle bone or bronze inscription of 脆 survives; its earliest confirmed use is in Han dynasty texts. Today, Chinese speakers most commonly encounter it in culinary contexts—ordering ‘炸得脆一点’ (zhà de cuì yì diǎn, ‘fry it a bit crisper’) at restaurants or reading ‘酥脆’ on biscuit wrappers.
As an archaeologist brushing dust from a Han dynasty bamboo slip, I find 脆 inscribed in clerical script—not as a philosophical abstraction, but as a precise descriptor of material failure. Its radical ⺼ (‘flesh’ or ‘body’) anchors it in the physical world: early texts use it for bones that snap, dried meat that shatters, or lacquer that cracks under stress—evidence of meticulous observation of structural integrity in ancient craftsmanship and medicine.
The ten-stroke composition reveals layered meaning: the left ⺼ signals corporeal or organic origin; the right ‘危’ (wēi, ‘precarious’) isn’t merely phonetic—it’s semantic residue. In excavated medical manuscripts like the Mawangdui Silk Texts, 脆 appears in diagnostic contexts: ‘liver qi is brittle’ implies vulnerability to sudden collapse, not just fragility. This reflects a holistic physiology where emotional and physical brittleness were medically entwined.
Unlike modern English ‘brittle’, which emphasizes fracture under pressure, classical 脆 carries temporal nuance: it denotes *imminent* failure—like a dried reed poised to snap at the slightest bend. This urgency surfaces in Tang poetry describing autumn grasses and Ming-era engineering manuals warning against ‘脆土’ (crumbly soil) in foundation digging. The character thus preserves a vanished epistemology: fragility as a dynamic, time-sensitive state—not a static property.
Example Sentences
Common Compounds
Similar Characters — Don't Mix These Up
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