广播
guǎngbō · HSK 3
broadcast
📻 广 = wide/broad + 播 = sow/spread; spread widely = broadcast
广 means wide or broad; 播 means to sow or scatter (originally sowing seeds). Together they literally mean to spread something widely, which is exactly what a broadcast does over the airwaves.
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').
播 — hand 扌 + 番 (turn/spread, phonetic)
播 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The hand radical 扌 signals the action, while 番 (originally depicting a paw print, later 'turn' or 'in turn') gives the sound and hints at scattering or spreading. The original sense was sowing seeds by hand, broadcasting them across a field; this extended to today's meanings of broadcasting and disseminating.