不理
bù lǐ · HSK 7
to ignore
🙉 bù lǐ = not + reason — no reason to deal with you
不 means not, 理 means reason or to manage. Together: not bothering to reason with someone, i.e. ignoring them. Like putting your hands over your ears — no reason given, just silence.
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'.
理 — jade radical 玉/王 + village 里 (phonetic)
理 is a semantic-phonetic compound: the jade radical 王 (玉) on the left signals meaning, while 里 on the right gives the sound. It originally meant the natural veins or grain in a piece of jade, then extended to 'pattern,' 'order,' 'principle,' and finally the modern senses 'reason' and 'to manage.'