戒烟
jiè yān · HSK 7
to give up smoking
🚭 戒 = quit/abstain + 烟 = smoke; together quit smoking
戒 means to give up or abstain from a habit (also the 戒 in 戒指 ring, originally a vow-marker). 烟 is smoke or cigarette. Stacked, they spell out renouncing the cigarette habit.
戒 — 廾 (two hands) + 戈 (dagger-axe)
Originally a pictograph showing two hands holding up a dagger-axe, depicting a guard on alert. The core meaning was 'to be on guard' or 'to be vigilant,' which extended to 'warn,' 'prohibit,' and later 'abstain from' (as in religious precepts).
烟 — fire radical 火 + 因 (cause, phonetic)
A semantic-phonetic compound: 火 ('fire') gives the meaning, while 因 supplies the sound 'yīn', close to 'yān'. Originally referring to the smoke rising from a fire, 烟 later extended to mist, vapor, and eventually tobacco and cigarettes in modern usage.