填写
tiánxiě · HSK 7
fill in a form
📝 填 fill + 写 write = fill in the blanks and write on a form
填 means to fill or stuff something into a gap; 写 means to write. Together they cover the act of writing entries into the empty fields of a form or document.
填 — earth 土 + 真 (zhēn, phonetic)
填 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The 土 (earth) radical signals the meaning—filling in with soil—while 真 supplies the sound (originally close to 'tian'). The original sense was to stuff or pack a hole with earth, later broadened to filling in any gap, form, or blank.
写 — 宀 roof + 与 (phonetic, simplified from 寫)
Originally 寫 depicted placing something under a roof (宀), extended to mean 'to set down' and then 'to write/copy'. The simplified form 写 keeps the roof but replaces the complex inner element with 与, which also hints at the sound. Today it broadly means 'to write' or 'to depict'.