捡
jiǎn · HSK 6
to pick up
🤏 Hand radical 扌 + jiǎn sounds like jeans — pick your jeans up off the floor
扌 means hand, so the action is done manually. The sound jiǎn is close to jeans. Laundry day: gather up all the jeans scattered around the room by hand.
捡 — hand radical 扌 + 佥 (qiān, phonetic)
A semantic-phonetic compound: 扌 (hand) signals an action done with the hand, while 佥 supplies the sound. The traditional form 撿 means 'to pick up' or 'gather,' a meaning preserved in the simplified 捡. The phonetic shifted from qiān to jiǎn over time.