切除
qiēchú · HSK 7
excise
🔪 切 (cut) + 除 (remove) = cut away, excise — what a surgeon does to a tumor
切 means to cut or slice; 除 means to remove or eliminate. Together they mean cutting something out — the medical sense of excising or resecting tissue. 除 also shows up in 除了 (except) and 删除 (delete), all about taking away.
切 — 七 (phonetic) + 刀 (knife radical)
切 is a semantic-phonetic compound: 刀 'knife' gives the meaning of cutting, while 七 supplies the sound. The original sense was to slice or cut with a blade. From there it extended figuratively to 'close to' (as in pressed against) and 'urgent/earnest', as in 切实.
除 — left ear/mound 阝 + surplus 余
除 combines the 'mound/steps' radical 阝 (originally 阜, a hill) with 余 as the phonetic. It first meant the steps of a palace, then extended to 'remove' or 'clear away' (as one sweeps steps clean), and later to mathematical 'divide.'