About
愎 is an adjective describing a stubborn, self-willed refusal to listen to others. It is a phono-semantic compound: the heart radical 忄 marks it as a character concerning mental disposition, while 复 (fù) provides the sound and also suggests persistence, together implying a persistent error of the mind. 复 connects it phonetically to characters like 腹 and 復. The character appears primarily in the formal idiom 刚愎自用 (gāngbìzìyòng), which depicts a rigidly headstrong, entirely subjective person who stubbornly insists on doing things their own way without accepting outside counsel. Its meaning centers on negative psychological rigidity, unyielding mental inflexibility, and overconfidence.
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