悲痛
bēi tòng · HSK 7
sorrowful
💔 悲 = not (非) + heart (心), 痛 = sickness (疒) + path (甬) — grief blocks every way out
非 (fēi, wrong) sits over 心 (xīn, heart): a heart gone wrong. 痛 pairs the sickness radical with 甬 (corridor), so pain seals off every path forward. Together they name sorrow so deep it feels like a sick, stuck heart.
痛 — sickness radical 疒 + 甬 (yǒng, phonetic)
痛 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The 疒 radical depicts a person on a sickbed and signals illness or pain. The component 甬 supplies the sound, historically close to 'tòng'. Together they convey bodily ache, later extended to emotional pain and the adverbial sense 'thoroughly'.