抢劫
qiǎng jié · HSK 7
to rob
💰 抢 = grab/snatch (扌hand radical) + 劫 = to plunder; together: to rob
抢 carries the 扌 hand radical, marking a forceful snatching action; 劫 means to coerce or plunder. The pair names a violent taking of property by force.
抢 — hand radical 扌 + 仓 cāng (granary)
A semantic-phonetic compound: the hand radical 扌 signals an action done with hands, while 仓 (granary) supplies the sound, originally close to qiāng/qiǎng. The early sense was to snatch or grab by force, which extended to 'rush, scramble for, vie for' in modern usage.
劫 — 去 (qù, phonetic) + 力 (lì, strength)
劫 combines 去 'to go/remove' as the phonetic component with 力 'strength/force' as the semantic component. The original meaning is to take by force, hence 'rob' or 'plunder.' It later extended to mean 'calamity' or 'disaster,' and in Buddhist texts it transliterates the Sanskrit word 'kalpa,' a vast cosmic age.