广告
guǎnggào · HSK 2
advertisement
📢 广 = wide + 告 = tell; widely telling = advertisement
广 means broad or wide, and 告 means to tell or announce. Together they mean broadly announcing something to the public — an advertisement. Related to 广播 (broadcast), which uses the same 广.
广 — shelter/roof radical 广 (yǎn)
广 originally depicted a building leaning against a cliff or hillside — a roof or shelter open on one side. It serves as the 'shelter' radical (yǎn) in many characters related to buildings (店, 庭, 库). In simplified Chinese, 广 was also adopted as the simplified form of 廣 ('wide, broad').
告 — ox 牛 (top) + mouth 口
Originally a pictograph showing an ox with something on its head, possibly a yoke or sacrificial marker, combined with 口 (mouth) to suggest announcing or reporting. The character came to mean 'to tell' or 'to announce,' as in making a formal declaration. Today it commonly appears in words like 告诉 (to tell) and 报告 (report).