收敛
shoū liǎn · HSK 7
to exercise restraint
🤏 收 gather + 敛 restrain = pull it all back in, rein yourself in
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.