推
tuī · HSK 2
push
👉 推 = 扌(hand) + 隹(short-tail bird) — hand shoos the bird away
The hand radical 扌gives the action; 隹 is a small bird and here lends the sound. A hand pushing a bird off a perch covers both senses: literal push and figurative decline/reject.
推 — hand radical 扌 + 隹 (short-tailed bird)
A semantic-phonetic compound: the hand radical 扌 gives the meaning 'to push' or act with the hand, while 隹 supplies the sound (originally close to 'tui'). The core sense has stayed remarkably stable, expanding from physical pushing to figurative uses like 'recommend' or 'infer'.