喂
wèi · HSK 2
hello
📞 sounds like 'way' — the casual 'hey' you say when answering the phone
喂 (wèi) is the standard greeting on phone calls in Mandarin, like 'hello?' in English. The mouth radical 口 on the left signals it's a spoken sound or call.
喂 — mouth 口 + wèi 畏 (phonetic)
喂 is a phono-semantic compound: 口 (mouth) gives the meaning, since the character relates to sounds made with the mouth, while 畏 supplies the pronunciation wèi. It is now used chiefly as the interjection 'hey' or telephone 'hello,' and also as the verb 'to feed.'