扣人心弦
koù rén xīn xián · HSK 7
to thrill
🎻❤️ 扣 hook + 人 people + 心弦 heartstrings = it tugs your heartstrings
心 is heart and 弦 is a string (as on an instrument), so 心弦 are the heartstrings. 扣人 means to hook people, so the whole thing literally hooks and tugs people's heartstrings: gripping, thrilling.
扣 — hand radical 扌 + 口 (mouth/phonetic)
扣 is a phono-semantic compound: the hand radical 扌 signals an action done with the hand, while 口 (kǒu) supplies the sound. Its core sense is to knock, fasten, or buckle with the hand, later extending to deduct (as in deducting points) and to button up.
人 — pictograph of a standing person
人 is a pictograph showing a person viewed from the side, with two strokes representing the legs and torso of a standing human. In oracle bone script it clearly depicted a figure leaning slightly forward. The meaning has remained 'person' or 'human' throughout its history.
心 — pictograph of a heart with chambers and aorta
心 is a pictograph showing a stylized heart, with strokes representing the organ's chambers and the aorta at the top. Originally meaning the physical heart, it broadened to cover mind, feelings, and intentions, since ancient Chinese thought located thinking and emotion in the heart.
弦 — bow 弓 + dark/profound 玄
A semantic-phonetic compound: 弓 (bow) gives the meaning, while 玄 supplies the sound. It originally referred to the taut bowstring, then extended to strings on musical instruments like the qin and pipa, and later to the mathematical sense of a chord or hypotenuse.