目不转睛
mù bù zhuǎn jīng · HSK 7
unable to take one's eyes off
👀 目 eye + 不 not + 转 turn + 睛 eyeball: eyes whose eyeballs never turn away
Four-character breakdown: 目 (eye) 不 (not) 转 (turn/swivel) 睛 (eyeball/pupil). The eyeballs stay locked, never swiveling, so the gaze holds steady — staring without looking away.
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'.
转 — car radical 车 + 专 (phonetic)
转 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The left side 车 (cart/wheel) gives the meaning, evoking something that turns or rotates like a wheel. The right side 专 supplies the sound. Originally referring to the turning of a cart's wheels, it broadened to mean 'turn,' 'rotate,' or 'shift' in general.