夏季
xià jì · HSK 4
summer
☀️ 夏季 = summer + season
夏 means summer and 季 means season or quarter of the year. Together 夏季 literally reads summer-season, the standard formal term for the summer period, parallel to 春季 spring-season and 冬季 winter-season.
季 — grain 禾 on top + child 子 below
Originally an associative compound showing young grain (禾) and a child (子), suggesting a young or immature crop. From this it came to mean 'youngest' among siblings, then a season or quarter of the year — a recurring period like a harvest cycle. Today it mostly means 'season' or a surname.