旷课
kuàng kè · HSK 7
to cut classes
🏫🚪 旷 (to neglect, leave vacant) + 课 (class) = leave your seat in class empty
旷 carries the sense of leaving something empty or wasting it; pair it with 课 (lesson, class) and you get the empty desk of a truant. Sound cue: kuàng-kè, a hard k-k pair, like the click of a door shutting behind a skipper.
课 — speech radical 讠(言) + fruit/result 果
课 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The left side 讠(言 'speech') gives the meaning, since the original sense involved oral examination or assessment. The right side 果 ('fruit, result') supplies the sound 'guǒ', which shifted to 'kè'. The meaning later broadened from 'test' to 'lesson' or 'class'.