吃亏
chīkuī · HSK 7
suffer loss
🍽️💸 eat + loss = swallow a bad deal
Chinese uses 吃 (eat) for enduring hardships: 吃苦 eat-bitterness, 吃惊 eat-surprise. 吃亏 means you swallowed someone elses advantage — you got the raw end of the deal.
吃 — mouth 口 + beg 乞
A semantic-phonetic compound: 口 (mouth) gives the meaning 'to eat,' while 乞 (qǐ, 'to beg') hints at the sound. The original character for 'eat' was 喫; 吃 first meant 'to stutter' but was later adopted as the standard simplified form for 'to eat.'
亏 — top stroke 一 + 丂 (hooked breath)
亏 is the simplified form of 虧. Originally 丂 depicted breath or air being exhaled with difficulty, suggesting something lacking or deficient. Over time it came to mean 'lose,' 'deficit,' or 'owe,' as in being short of what is needed.