了不起
liǎo bu qǐ · HSK 4
extraordinary
🤩 了 (finish) + 不起 (cannot) — so good others 'can't finish' praising it
Literal decomposition: 了 = complete/end, 不 = not, 起 = rise/up. Together 不起 means 'cannot bear/match'. So 了不起 = 'cannot be topped' — extraordinary, beyond compare.
了 — pictograph of swaddled child with no arms
了 originally depicted an infant wrapped in swaddling cloth, with the arms hidden or bound — a variant of 子 (child) without the arms. From 'finished wrapping' it extended to mean 'completed' or 'finished,' which is its main modern grammatical use as an aspect particle marking completed action.
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.'