信赖
xìnlài · HSK 7
trust
🤝 信 trust/believe + 赖 rely on = to trust and rely on someone
信 carries the sense of believing or having faith; 赖 means to lean on or depend. Together they name the deeper trust where you both believe in someone and lean on them. Shares 信 with 信任 and 相信.
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.
赖 — 束 bundle + 负 carry/owe (originally 剌)
Originally a phono-semantic compound suggesting profit or gain from a bundle of goods, with 束 hinting at sound and the right side conveying meaning. Over time it shifted to mean 'rely on' and 'depend on,' then extended to 'deny' or 'repudiate' (as in shirking a debt one relies on others to forget).