手术室
shǒushùshì · HSK 7
room
🏥🔪 手术 surgery + 室 room; 手 hand + 术 technique = hand-technique room
手术 (shǒushù) means surgery, literally 手 hand + 术 skill/technique. Add 室 (shì) room and you get the room where hand-skill operations happen: the operating room.
手 — pictograph of a hand with five fingers
手 is a pictograph showing an open hand with fingers and a wrist. Early bronze and oracle bone forms clearly depict five splayed fingers, which simplified over time into the modern shape. It keeps its original meaning of 'hand' and also serves as a radical in many characters related to hand actions.
室 — roof 宀 + arrive 至
A semantic compound: 宀 (roof/house) over 至 (to arrive). The image is a place one arrives at and stays in — an inner room. From 'inner chamber' the meaning broadened to 'room' generally, and by extension to specialized rooms like an office or laboratory.