Kilo Lingo

(qǐ) - to rise, to get up; (directional complement) up in Mandarin

qǐ

Traditional: 起

Line drawing of 起
Coloured illustration of 起
HSK 2
#597 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

to rise, to get up; (directional complement) up

Word origin

起 (qǐ) is a phono-semantic compound of 走, the 'walk' or 'run' radical, with 己 (jǐ) marking the sound. The walking radical gives the sense of motion, here 'to rise' or 'to get up'.

Origin
phono-semantic compound
Root
走 (walk radical) + 己 (jǐ, phonetic)

Stroke order

Stroke order for 起

起

Examples

。

He gets up very early every day.

六liù。

I get up at six every day.

，。

It was dawn; he got up from bed.

。

Everyone please come together.

起 (qǐ) means to rise, get up, or begin. Standalone it appears in 起床 (get out of bed), 起飞 (take off). As a directional complement it indicates upward movement: 站起来 (stand up), 拿起 (pick up), 爬起来 (get up/climb up). As part of 从...起 it marks the start of a period (从今天起, starting today). 起来 (qǐ lái) as a compound complement is extremely versatile, adding inchoative or upward meaning to many verbs.

Appears in 8 words

Multi-character compounds in the corpus that contain 起.

一起yì qǐtogether, with each other起来qǐ láito get up, to rise对不起duì bù qǐsorry, excuse me看起来kàn qǐ láiit seems, it looks like, apparently不起bù qǐcannot afford, unable to (verb complement)想起xiǎng qǐto recall, to think of, to remember了不起liǎo bù qǐamazing, remarkable, extraordinary引起yǐn qǐto cause, to give rise to, to attract

Used in

Grammar articles

(12)

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This word is part of lesson 12.