快餐
kuài cān · HSK 2
fast food
🍔 快餐 = 快 (fast) + 餐 (meal)
快 means fast or quick; 餐 means meal or food (the same 餐 in 早餐 breakfast, 午餐 lunch, 晚餐 dinner). Together: a fast meal — fast food or a quick bite.
快 — heart radical 忄 + 夬 (phonetic)
快 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The heart radical 忄 carries the meaning, since the original sense referred to a feeling of pleasure or delight. The right side 夬 supplies the sound. The meaning later extended from 'pleased' to 'quick, fast', the dominant modern sense.
餐 — 歺 (bone fragment) + 又 (hand) + 食 (food)
Originally a phono-semantic compound showing a hand (又) taking food from bones (歺), with 食 (food) as the meaning component. The top portion 'cǎn' provides the sound, while 食 indicates the meaning of eating. Over time it came to mean 'meal' or 'to eat.'