倒霉
dǎo méi · HSK 7
to have bad luck
🍀🚫 dao sounds like downtrodden, mei like mouldy — downtrodden and mouldy luck
倒 means to fall or topple, 霉 means mould or mildew. Together: your luck has toppled and gone mouldy. When everything goes wrong, your fortune has literally collapsed into rot.
倒 — person radical 亻 + 到 (to arrive)
倒 is a semantic-phonetic compound: the person radical 亻 gives meaning (an action done by/to a person), while 到 supplies the sound 'dào'. Originally meaning 'to fall over' (a person toppling), it extended to 'invert, upside down, pour out', as when something falls and spills.