挑剔
tiāo ti · HSK 7
picky
🔍 挑 pick/select + 剔 pick-out = always picking things out, i.e. picky
挑 tiāo means to pick or select; 剔 tī means to pick out or pare away. Someone who keeps selecting and rejecting bits is 挑剔 — picky, fussy, hard to please.
挑 — hand radical 扌 + 兆 (zhào, omen)
A semantic-phonetic compound: the hand radical 扌 signals a hand action, while 兆 supplies the sound. The original sense was to lift or carry on a shoulder pole, which extended to picking out, selecting, and stirring up — hence today's meanings 'to choose' (tiāo) and 'to provoke' (tiǎo).