抢夺
qiǎng duó · HSK 7
to forcibly take
💰🏃 抢 snatch + 夺 seize = two grab-verbs stacked: take by force, plunder
Both characters mean to grab violently: 抢 (qiǎng) is to snatch or rob, 夺 (duó) is to wrest or seize. Doubled up, they intensify into plundering and pillaging. The duó half also hides 寸 (a measuring hand) under 大, a hand taking what it grabs.
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.
夺 — big 大 + short-tailed bird 隹 + hand 寸
Originally written 奪, showing a hand (寸) seizing a bird (隹) from someone's grasp (大), depicting the act of snatching away. The simplified form 夺 drops the bird component but keeps the meaning of seizing, taking by force, or contending for something.