买不起
mǎi bu qǐ · HSK 7
cannot afford
💸 买 buy + 不 not + 起 rise/manage = can't raise enough to buy it
The verb-不-起 pattern means lacking the capacity to do something. With 买 (buy), it marks the price as out of reach: you literally cannot manage the purchase, so you can't afford it.
买 — top 乛 (simplified 罒/網 net) + 头 (head, simplified of 貝 shell)
In its traditional form 買, the character shows a net (网) over a cowrie shell (貝), the ancient money — together meaning 'to net/acquire goods with money,' i.e. to buy. The simplified form 买 keeps the same idea with reduced strokes. It pairs with 卖 (sell), which adds 士 on top to show goods going out.
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'.
起 — 走 (run) + 己 (self/phonetic)
起 combines 走 'run/walk' as the meaning component with 己 as the phonetic component. The 走 element suggests movement of the body, giving the core sense of rising up or starting to move. From there it extended to meanings like 'get up,' 'begin,' and 'arise.'