走投无路
zoǔ toú wú lù · HSK 7
to be at an impasse
🚧 走 walk + 投 head-toward + 无 no + 路 road = no road left to walk
Every path is blocked, so there is nowhere left to head toward. It marks the moment of being cornered with no escape route, at the end of one's rope.
走 — person running 夭 + foot 止
Originally a pictograph of a person with arms swinging (夭) above a foot (止), depicting someone running. The bottom 止 (foot) was later simplified to a form resembling 火 in modern script. The original sense was 'to run,' which still survives in compounds; the everyday meaning shifted to 'to walk' or 'to go.'
投 — hand radical 扌 + weapon 殳
Originally a pictograph of a hand (扌) throwing or hurling a weapon or staff (殳). The core meaning 'to throw, cast, hurl' extended over time to figurative senses like 'to invest,' 'to deliver,' or 'to throw oneself into' something.
无 — top 一 + 林-like middle + fire radical 灬 below
Originally a pictograph of a person dancing while holding ornaments or tassels, meaning 'to dance' — the ancestor of 舞. It was borrowed phonetically to write the negative 'not have / without,' and the dance meaning was reassigned to 舞 with an added foot element. The simplified form 无 comes from an ancient variant.
路 — foot 足 + each 各 (phonetic)
路 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The foot radical 足 on the left signals meaning related to walking or travel, while 各 on the right hints at the ancient pronunciation. Originally referring to a road traveled on foot, it broadened to mean 'road, path, route' in general.