挑衅
tiǎo xìn · HSK 7
to provoke
🥊 挑 stir up + 衅 quarrel = to provoke a fight
挑 tiǎo is the same poke as in 挑战 (challenge): to pick at or stir up. 衅 xìn means a rift or quarrel. Together: to stir up a quarrel, i.e. to provoke.
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).