收拾
shōushí · HSK 5
tidy up
🧹 收 = receive/collect + 拾 = pick up → gather things up = tidy
收 means to collect or take in; 拾 means to pick up (also the formal form of 'ten'). Together they describe gathering scattered items back into order — tidying up or putting things away.
收 — 丩 (jiū, cord/bind) + 攵 (rap/strike, action)
Originally written 收, this character combines 丩 'twisted cord' as the phonetic with 攵 'a hand holding a stick' as the semantic, depicting the action of binding up captives or gathering things together by force. The core sense 'to gather, collect, harvest' grew naturally from this image of rounding up and tying.
拾 — hand radical 扌 + 合 (combine)
A semantic-phonetic compound: 扌 (hand) gives the meaning of picking up, while 合 (hé, to join) supplies the phonetic, shifted to shí. Originally meant to gather or pick up with the hand. The reading shè is used in formal contexts and as a numeral variant of 十 (ten) on financial documents.