弯曲
wānqū · HSK 6
to bend; to curve around
🥨 弯 bend + 曲 crooked — two curves stacked into one distortion
wānqū sounds like 'one queue' — a single line that got bent out of shape. Both characters independently mean bend or curve, so together they double down on crookedness.
弯 — bow 弓 + 䜌 (phonetic)
A phono-semantic compound: 弓 (bow) gives the meaning 'curved, bent,' since a drawn bow forms an arc, while 䜌 supplies the sound. The simplified form 弯 keeps 弓 below a reduced top component. The core sense has always been 'bend' or 'curve.'
曲 — pictograph of a bent carpenter's tool or curved object
曲 is a pictograph showing a bent or curved shape, originally depicting a carpenter's measuring tool or a curved frame. From this concrete image of bending came the abstract senses of 'crooked,' 'wrong,' and 'tune/melody' (since songs follow winding contours). The reading qū carries the bending senses, while qǔ means 'song.'