书架
shū jià · HSK 3
bookshelf
📚 书 (book) + 架 (rack/frame) = bookshelf
书 means book and 架 means a rack or frame for holding things. Put them together and you get a frame for books — a bookshelf. The same 架 shows up in 衣架 (clothes rack) and 书架 follows the same pattern.
书 — hand 又 holding brush over 曰 (say/speak)
Originally a pictograph of a hand gripping a writing brush above a mouth or vessel, depicting the act of writing speech down. The traditional form 書 shows 聿 (brush) over 曰 (to say). Simplified 书 preserves the brush-in-hand shape, and the meaning extended from 'to write' to 'writing' and then 'book'.
架 — wood 木 + add 加 (phonetic)
A semantic-phonetic compound: 木 (wood) gives the meaning, since a 架 is a wooden frame, rack, or shelf used to support things. 加 (jiā) supplies the sound. From 'wooden frame' it extended to verbs like 'to set up,' 'to prop up,' and to a measure word for framed objects such as airplanes.