弊病
bì bìng · HSK 7
drawback
🏚️ bì bìng sounds like BE BING — a bad bing, a systemic flaw
弊 means fraud or abuse, 病 means sickness. Together they describe a deep-rooted defect in a system or practice — not a physical illness but an institutional malady, like corruption or a chronic drawback.
病 — sickness radical 疒 + 丙 (bǐng, phonetic)
病 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The radical 疒 depicts a person lying on a bed and signals illness or ailment. The component 丙 supplies the sound (bǐng → bìng). Originally 病 referred to a serious illness, contrasted with 疾 for a lighter ailment; today it broadly means 'sick' or 'disease.'