协议书
xié yì shū · HSK 5
contract
📄 协 cooperate + 议 discuss + 书 document = agreement document
协 (cooperate) + 议 (discuss/deliberate) together mean agreement or protocol; adding 书 (written document) makes it the physical contract or written protocol that records what parties agreed to.
议 — speech radical 讠 (言) + 义 (yì, righteousness)
议 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The speech radical 讠 (言) signals meaning related to talking, while 义 supplies the sound 'yì'. Together they convey discussing or deliberating—literally 'speech about what is right,' which fits its modern senses of 'discuss' and 'proposal.'
书 — hand 又 holding brush over 曰 (say/speak)
Originally a pictograph of a hand gripping a writing brush above a mouth or vessel, depicting the act of writing speech down. The traditional form 書 shows 聿 (brush) over 曰 (to say). Simplified 书 preserves the brush-in-hand shape, and the meaning extended from 'to write' to 'writing' and then 'book'.