情不自禁
qíng bù zì jīn · HSK 7
unable to restrain emotions
💓 情 emotion + 不 not + 自 self + 禁 restrain = emotion you cannot self-restrain
Literally emotion-not-self-restrain: the feeling acts before you can hold it back, so you cannot help it. 禁 also means to prohibit or forbid, here the failure to forbid your own reaction.
情 — heart radical 忄 + 青 (qīng)
A semantic-phonetic compound. The heart radical 忄 signals that the meaning involves feelings or inner states, while 青 supplies the sound 'qing'. Originally referring to genuine feelings or emotion arising from the heart, 情 expanded to cover sentiment, affection, and circumstances or situations more broadly.
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'.
自 — pictograph of a nose
自 originally depicted a human nose, shown frontally with the bridge and nostrils. Ancient Chinese pointed to their own nose to mean 'me,' so 自 shifted to mean 'self' or 'oneself.' A new character 鼻 was later created to carry the original 'nose' meaning.