鬼
Tap the pinyin to hear it
disembodied spirit; ghost; devil; (suffix) person with a certain vice or addiction etc; sly; crafty; resourceful (variant of 詭|诡[gui3]); one of the 28 constellations of ancient Chinese astronomy
- HSK 3.0
- Level 5
- Old HSK
- Level 5
- Strokes
- 9
- Radical
- 鬼 itself
- Structure
- Upper-left enclosure 左上包
- Traditional
- 鬼
- Common rank
- #528
- Unicode
- U+9B3C
Sound it out + =
Formation & memory
Break the character into parts you already know.
How 鬼 is formed
Pictograph (象形字)
A ghost with a scary face
Components 乚 厶
? unknown part
How to remember it
ghost · Heisig RSH #1472
a drop of + brains + human legs + elbow
Keyword method from Heisig's Remembering Simplified Hanzi.
Words with 鬼
The most common words first — learning a character in context makes it stick.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 心中有鬼 | to harbor ulterior motives (idiom) | |
| 心里有鬼 | to have secret motives; to have a guilty conscience | |
| 日本鬼子 | Japanese devil (common term of abuse in wartime China and in subsequent writing) | |
| 鬼天气 | awful weather | |
| 小气鬼 | miser; penny-pincher | |
| 二鬼子 | traitor; collaborator with the enemy | |
| 见人说人话，见鬼说鬼话 | (fig.) adaptable; able to deal with various kinds of people and situations; (derog.) insin… | |
| 东洋鬼子 | (esp. during resistance against Japanese aggression 1931–1945) Jap; Nip | |
| 点鬼火 | to stir up trouble in secret; to instigate | |
| 鬼门关 | the gates of hell | |
| 鬼子 | devil (derog. term for foreign invaders); (esp. during resistance against Japanese aggress… | |
| 鬼马 | (originally Cantonese) impish; playful; quirky; paper horse used in traditional funeral ri… | |
| 小鬼 | little demon (term of endearment for a child); mischievous child; imp | |
| 白鬼 | "white ghost", derogatory term for caucasians (Cantonese) | |
| 有鬼 | (fig.) to smell fishy | |
| 洋鬼子 | foreign devil; term of abuse for Westerners | |
| 神出鬼没 | (lit.) to appear and disappear unpredictably like a spirit or a ghost (idiom); (fig.) elus… | |
| 鬼城 | ghost town | |
| 鬼神 | supernatural beings | |
| 引鬼上门 | lit. to invite the devil to one's house (idiom); fig. to introduce a potential source of t… |
Sound family
These characters use 鬼 as their sound component — compare how they read.