信仰
xìnyǎng · HSK 6
belief
🙏 信 trust + 仰 look up to — faith is trusting what you look up to
信 is a person standing by their word (亻+ 言). 仰 is a person tilting upward (亻+ 卬). Together: standing firmly by something you hold above you.
信 — person 亻 + speech 言
信 combines 亻(person) with 言(speech), depicting a person standing by their words. The original sense is 'truthfulness' or 'sincerity'—what a person says can be trusted. From this it extended to 'believe,' 'trust,' and later 'message' or 'letter,' since a letter carries one's word.
仰 — person radical 亻 + 卬 (phonetic)
仰 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The 亻 (person) radical gives the meaning, while 卬 supplies the sound; 卬 itself originally depicted one person standing and another kneeling looking up, so it also reinforces the sense. The character means to look up, and by extension to admire or rely on.