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灰溜溜

Mandarin · pinyin huī liū liū

dull gray
gloomy
dejected
crestfallen
with one's tail between one's legs

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Characters in this entry

灰: huī · ashes; dust; lime, mortar
溜: liū · slide, glide, slip; slippery

Written characters and their own readings; the entry’s pronunciation is shown above.

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Mandarin tones

1–1–1 · hui1 liu1 liu1

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Follow a written form into the eight pinned witnesses: Analects, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Han Feizi, Sunzi and the Mao Shijing. A match is a place to investigate; it does not prove that a modern dictionary sense fits the passage.

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Rime Cantonese 粵拼

fui1 lau6 lau6

Cantonese word readings for 灰溜溜. This lexicon supplies readings, not definitions.

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Wiktionary English definitions · Chinese section

Independent source senses for this spelling, with usage labels retained. Not matched to the pronunciation above.

adj

crestfallen; dejected

Source page · dump 2026-09-02 · Contributors & history

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