饥
Tap the pinyin to hear it
(bound form) hungry
- HSK 3.0
- Level 7–9
- Old HSK
- Level 6
- Strokes
- 5
- Radical
- 食 +2
- Structure
- Left–right 左右
- Traditional
- 飢
- Common rank
- #2,419
- Unicode
- U+9965
Sound it out + =
Formation & memory
Break the character into parts you already know.
How to remember it
starving · Heisig RSH #2517
食 food + small table
Keyword method from Heisig's Remembering Simplified Hanzi.
Words with 饥
The most common words first — learning a character in context makes it stick.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 饱人不知饿人饥 | The well-fed cannot know how the starving suffer (idiom). | |
| 饱暖思淫欲，饥寒起盗心 | lechery springs from warmth and nourishment, kleptomania springs from hunger and cold (idi… | |
| 饱汉不知饿汉饥 | The well-fed cannot know how the starving suffer (idiom). | |
| 积谷防饥 | storing grain against a famine; to lay sth by for a rainy day; also written 積穀防飢|积谷防饥 | |
| 易饥症 | bulimia | |
| 饥不择食 | when hungry, you can't pick what you eat (idiom); beggars can't be choosers; When matters … | |
| 饥寒交迫 | beset by hunger and cold (idiom); starving and freezing; in desperate poverty | |
| 画饼充饥 | lit. to allay one's hunger using a picture of a cake; to feed on illusions (idiom) | |
| 啼饥号寒 | (idiom) to cry from hunger and cold; to suffer extreme poverty | |
| 如饥似渴 | to hunger for sth (idiom); eagerly; to long for sth | |
| 充饥 | to allay one's hunger | |
| 饥荒 | crop failure; famine; debt; difficulty | |
| 忍饥挨饿 | starving; famished | |
| 挨饥抵饿 | to suffer from hunger | |
| 漏脯充饥 | (lit.) to eat rotten meat to assuage hunger (idiom); (fig.) to disregard long-term consequ… | |
| 饥饿 | hunger; starvation; famine | |
| 饥渴 | hungry and thirsty; (fig.) to crave (knowledge, love etc) | |
| 饥肠辘辘 | (idiom) stomach rumbling with hunger; very hungry | |
| 饥馑荐臻 | famine repeats unceasingly (idiom, from Book of Songs) |
Sound family
Characters sharing the sound component 几 — compare how they read.