偷看
toū kàn · HSK 7
to peek
👀 偷 (steal) + 看 (look) = steal a look = peek, peep
偷 means to steal or do secretly, and 看 means to look. Together they literally form steal-a-look, which is exactly what peeping is. The toū in 偷 also starts like the English word took, as in took a sneaky look.
偷 — person radical 亻 + 俞 (yú, phonetic)
A semantic-phonetic compound: the person radical 亻 signals a human action, while 俞 supplies the sound. Originally 偷 meant 'careless' or 'perfunctory,' and over time it shifted to its modern sense of 'to steal' or 'stealthily.'
看 — hand 手 over eye 目
看 is an associative compound showing a hand (手, simplified to 龹) shading an eye (目), depicting someone shielding their eyes to look into the distance. From this concrete gesture it broadened to mean 'to look,' 'to watch,' and later 'to read' or 'to consider.'