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垃圾 (lā jī) — trash, garbage, refuse; (colloquial) worthless, of poor quality

Definition

Noun for physical trash or rubbish. As a colloquial adjective, it means something is worthless or terrible in quality — more slangy than 劣质. Do not confuse the spoken 不予 with the noun here.

noun
trashgarbagerefuse(colloquial) worthlessof poor quality
Measure word · 堆

Examples

  • 垃圾。
    Qǐng bǎ lā jī rēng dào wài miàn qù.
    Please throw the trash outside.
  • 垃圾。
    Zhè bù diàn yǐng tài lā jī le.
    This movie is so bad.
  • 垃圾。
    Wǒ men yào xué huì fēn lèi lā jī.
    We need to learn to sort the garbage.

Origin

Single-morpheme word
构词法gòucífǎ
联绵liánmiánBound pair

Two characters that only ever appear together, spelling one ancient two-syllable word.

垃lā
圾jī

The characters 垃 and 圾 carry no meaning of their own here; together they name trash or garbage.

Sound-only characters

No reliable origin is recorded for this character.

Open 垃 →

No reliable origin is recorded for this character.

Appears in
HSK 3.0 Level 4Cleaning & Chores2000 Most Frequent Chinese Words3000 Most Frequent Chinese Words5000 Most Frequent Chinese Words

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