一毛不拔
yī máo bù bá · HSK 7
stingy (idiom)
💇 一毛不拔 = one + hair + not + pull: won't even pull out a single hair to help
Literal breakdown: 一 one, 毛 hair, 不 not, 拔 pluck. A person so stingy they refuse to give up even one hair — the smallest, most worthless thing they own.
一 — single horizontal stroke
一 is one of the simplest pictographs in Chinese, depicting a single horizontal line to represent the number one. It has retained essentially the same form since oracle bone script over 3,000 years ago. By extension it also means 'first,' 'whole,' or 'same.'
毛 — pictograph of hair/fur, 4 strokes
毛 is a pictograph showing a tuft of hair or animal fur, with strands fanning out from a base. The original oracle bone form depicted feathers or fur clearly, and the meaning broadened from 'hair/fur' to include 'wool,' 'down,' and figuratively 'tiny' or 'rough.' It also became a common surname.
不 — single pictograph; bird flying upward
Originally a pictograph in oracle bone script, traditionally interpreted as a bird flying up toward the sky and unable to come down, suggesting negation or refusal. Over time it became the standard negation word in Chinese, used before verbs and adjectives to mean 'not'.
拔 — hand radical 扌 + 犮 (phonetic)
拔 is a phonetic-semantic compound. The hand radical 扌 indicates the meaning—an action done with the hand, namely pulling or uprooting. The component 犮 (originally depicting a dog with legs splayed) supplies the sound 'bá'. The core sense 'to pull out, uproot' has stayed stable since early seal script.