推开
tuī kāi · HSK 3
to push open
🚪 推 (push) + 开 (open) = push open, push away, reject
推 means push and 开 means open or apart. Together: push something open like a door, or push someone/something away — hence the figurative sense of rejecting or declining an offer.
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'.
开 — two hands 廾 + door 门 (open gate)
Originally written 開, showing two hands (廾) lifting the bar (一) off a gate (門) to open it. The simplified form 开 keeps the two-hands element and drops the gate. Core meaning 'to open' extended to 'start, operate, bloom'.