垂头丧气
chuí toú sàng qì · HSK 7
dejected
😞 droop head + lose spirit — literally hanging your head, deflated
垂 means droop/hang, 头 is head, 丧 is lose/mourn, 气 is spirit/energy. So the whole idiom spells out the posture: head drooping, spirit gone. Think of a deflated balloon with no air left.
垂 — plant with drooping leaves/flowers
垂 is a pictograph showing a plant with branches and leaves hanging down toward the ground. The original sense was 'to droop' or 'hang down,' which extended to meanings like 'to let fall,' 'to bestow from above,' and 'border/edge' (where things hang at the limit).
头 — 页 (head/page) + 豆 (bean, phonetic)
The traditional form 頭 combines 頁 (xié), meaning 'head', with 豆 (dòu) as the phonetic component. 頁 itself originally depicted a person with an emphasized head. The simplified form 头 is a modern shorthand that replaces 豆+頁 with a simpler shape while keeping the same meaning of 'head' or 'top'.
气 — steam/vapor radical 气
Originally a pictograph of rising vapor or clouds drifting in the sky, depicting curling streams of air. The character came to mean breath, air, and by extension vital energy or 'qi.' The simplified form 气 keeps the original outline; the traditional 氣 added 米 (rice) to suggest steam rising from cooking grain.