上课
shàngkè · HSK 1
go to class
📚 上课 = shàng (go up/attend) + kè (lesson/class)
上 means 'up' or 'to attend/go to', and 课 means 'lesson' or 'class'. Together they mean attending or giving a class. The same 上 appears in 上班 (go to work) and 上学 (go to school).
上 — horizontal line above a baseline
上 is an indicative character (指事): a short stroke placed above a longer reference line shows the concept of 'above' or 'up'. The earliest oracle-bone forms used two horizontal lines for this; the modern shape added a vertical stroke for clarity. The core meaning of 'upper, above, to ascend' has stayed stable for millennia.
课 — speech radical 讠(言) + fruit/result 果
课 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The left side 讠(言 'speech') gives the meaning, since the original sense involved oral examination or assessment. The right side 果 ('fruit, result') supplies the sound 'guǒ', which shifted to 'kè'. The meaning later broadened from 'test' to 'lesson' or 'class'.