优美
yōuměi · HSK 4
graceful
🦢 优 = excellent + 美 = beautiful → excellent-beautiful = graceful
优 means excellent or superior (亻 person + 尤 outstanding); 美 means beautiful (originally 大 big + 羊 sheep, a fine sheep). Together: surpassingly beautiful — used for graceful scenery, music, or movement.
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.'
美 — sheep 羊 on top + big 大 below
美 is traditionally explained as a pictograph of a person (大) wearing a large sheep or ram's-head ornament, suggesting beauty through adornment. An alternative reading takes 羊 (sheep) over 大 (big) to mean 'a big, fat sheep'—seen as delicious and pleasing, hence 'beautiful, good'.