收藏
shōucáng · HSK 6
collect
🗃️ 收 gather + 藏 hide = things you gather and tuck away
藏 also means treasury or Tibet — a place where precious things are hidden. A collection is what you gather and keep stored safely.
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.
藏 — grass radical 艹 + 臧 (phonetic)
A semantic-phonetic compound. The grass radical 艹 on top suggests plants or vegetation used for concealment, while 臧 below provides the sound. Originally meant to hide or conceal something in the grass, later extended to mean 'store' or 'collect,' and when read 'zàng' it means a treasury or storehouse.