恐慌
kǒnghuāng · HSK 7
panic
🚨 恐 = fear + 慌 = flustered/frantic, so fear-plus-frantic = panic
恐 carries dread or fear (as in 恐怖, terror), and 慌 means flustered or frantic. Stack the dread onto the franticness and you get 恐慌: the overwhelmed, alarmed state of panic.
慌 — heart radical 忄 + 荒 huāng (wild)
A semantic-phonetic compound: the heart radical 忄 gives the meaning (an emotional state), while 荒 supplies the sound huāng and a hint of 'wild, barren.' Originally suggesting a heart in disarray like wasteland, it came to mean flustered, panicked, or in a hurry.