优秀
yōuxiù · HSK 4
outstanding
🏆 优 (excellent) + 秀 (refined) = outstanding + excellent
优 means excellent or superior, and 秀 means refined, elegant, or distinguished. Together 优秀 stacks two near-synonyms to mean outstanding or excellent — a common Mandarin pattern of pairing similar characters for emphasis.
优 — person radical 亻 + worry 憂
优 is a semantic-phonetic compound: the person radical 亻 indicates a human, while 憂 (worry, also providing the sound) originally depicted an actor or performer who moved others emotionally. From 'actor' it extended to 'graceful, refined,' and in modern Chinese it commonly means 'excellent' or 'superior.'