接手
jiē shoǔ · HSK 7
to take over
🤝 接 receive + 手 hand = take the handoff, receive duties into your hand
接 means to receive or connect, 手 means hand. To take over is to receive a job into your own hand. The baseball catcher sense follows: the one whose hand receives the throw.
接 — hand 扌 + concubine 妾 (phonetic)
接 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The hand radical 扌 carries the meaning of receiving or joining with the hand, while 妾 supplies the sound. From 'taking with the hand' it broadened to 'receive, meet, connect, join together'.
手 — pictograph of a hand with five fingers
手 is a pictograph showing an open hand with fingers and a wrist. Early bronze and oracle bone forms clearly depict five splayed fingers, which simplified over time into the modern shape. It keeps its original meaning of 'hand' and also serves as a radical in many characters related to hand actions.