掺
chān , shǎn · HSK 7
to mix
🥣 CHAN the chef chans ingredients together — mix and grasp
Sound-alike: chan sounds like a name — Chef Chan grabs handfuls of spices and mixes them into the pot. The character combines hand radical 扌 with 参 (participate), so a hand participating in mixing.
掺 — hand radical 扌 + 参 (cān, phonetic)
A phono-semantic compound. The hand radical 扌 signals an action done by hand, while 参 supplies the sound (cān, leading to chān). The original sense was 'to mix in by hand,' which broadened to mean blending, adulterating, or adding one substance into another.