娇惯

jiāo guàn · HSK 7

to pamper

🍬 娇 delicate + 惯 accustomed = make someone used to being treated as delicate

娇 carries the 女 woman radical and means tender or fragile; 惯 means habituated or accustomed. Together: to habituate someone to soft treatment, i.e. to pamper or spoil.

惯 — heart radical 忄 + 贯 (guàn, string of coins)
A semantic-phonetic compound. The heart radical 忄 signals a mental or emotional quality, while 贯 — originally a string threading coins together — supplies the sound and the idea of 'threading through' continuously. Together they suggest a habit: something the heart strings together repeatedly until it becomes routine.

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