好坏
hǎo huài · HSK 7
good or bad
👍👎 好 good + 坏 bad = good-or-bad, the quality of a thing
Two opposite single characters glued together: 好 (hǎo, good) plus 坏 (huài, bad). Chinese often pairs opposites to name the whole scale, so good-plus-bad becomes the word for quality or standard.
好 — woman 女 + child 子
好 is an associative compound showing a woman 女 beside a child 子, depicting a mother with her baby. From this image of maternal affection it came to mean 'good, fine, pleasing.' The reading hǎo means 'good'; read hào it means 'to like.'
坏 — earth 土 + 不 (not)
A modern simplified form. The left side 土 (earth) suggests something physical or material, while the right side 不 (not/negative) acts as a semantic hint meaning 'not good.' The traditional form 壞 used 褱 as a phonetic component, but the simplified 坏 reuses an older variant character.