不经意 (bù jīng yì) — not paying attention; carelessly; by accident;… | TongTong Chinese Dictionary

Definition

不经意 means 'inadvertently / without paying attention' — a neutral, soft adverbial phrase. It's milder than 胡乱 ('recklessly') and less self-critical than 粗心大意 ('carelessly negligent').

phrase

not paying attentioncarelesslyby accidentinadvertently

Examples

不经意。
Tā bù jīng yì dì shuō cuò le huà.
He said the wrong thing without paying attention.
不经意，。
bù jīng yì Jiān, wǒ kàn dào le tā de xiào róng.
Inadvertently, I caught sight of her smile.
不经意。
Tā bù jīng yì dì fā xiàn le wèn tí de dá àn.
She accidentally discovered the answer to the problem.

Origin

Compound word

构词法gòucífǎ

偏正piānzhèngModifier + head

The first part narrows down the second: it says what kind of thing the head is.

经意pay attention

经jīngattend意yìmind

动宾Verb + object

不 expresses not, and 经意 suggests paying attention, so the whole means carelessly or inadvertently.

Characters in this word

A drawing of the thing itself, worn down over three thousand years into a few strokes.

The picture in 不 originally showed a flower’s calyx; the “no” sense came later from a related character, not from this picture.

Most characters — around four in five — are built this way: one part hints at the meaning, the other at the pronunciation.

This origin belongs to the traditional form 經; 经 is its simplified writing.

糹巠經

Meaning part形符xíngfú

糹Written in full as糸mìsilk; thread

Sound part声符shēngfú

巠

巠jīng經jīng

Same sound today

The traditional form 經 combines 糹 (silk; thread) with 巠, which gives the sound.

No reliable origin is recorded for this character.

Appears in

HSK 3.0 Level 7-9 Thinking & Cognition

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