睽 meaning and stroke order

睽 combines the eye 目 on the left with 癸 (guǐ) on the right, which gives the sound. Picture an eye wide open, staring hard, as if two people have drifted apart and are looking at each other from a distance.

睽 is a literary character and rarely appears alone in modern speech. You mostly meet it in set phrases like 众目睽睽 (zhòng mù kuí kuí), meaning "in full view of everyone." Example: 他在众目睽睽之下走上台。(Tā zài zhòng mù kuí kuí zhī xià zǒu shàng tái.) He walked onto the stage with everyone watching.

Common mistake: Learners often read 睽 as guǐ because of the phonetic 癸, but the correct reading is kuí with a second tone. It is also easy to confuse with 揆 (kuí, to estimate), which has the hand radical 扌 instead of the eye 目.