晒太阳
shàitàiyáng · HSK 7
Sun
☀️ 晒 (shài) = bask/dry-in-sun + 太阳 (tàiyáng) = sun; together: to sunbathe
晒 means to expose something to sunlight (to dry or bask), and 太阳 is the sun itself. Put them together and you get the act of soaking up the sun. The 日 (sun) radical sits inside both 晒 and 太阳.
晒 — sun 日 + west 西 (phonetic)
A semantic-phonetic compound. The 日 (sun) component gives the meaning of sunlight or drying in the sun, while 西 (xī) suggests the pronunciation. Originally written 曬, the character refers to exposing things to sunlight, and by extension now means to show off or share publicly.
太 — 大 'big' + extra dot 丶
太 originally derived from 大 ('big, person with arms outstretched') with an added stroke to mean 'greatest' or 'too much'. The extra dot intensifies 大, signaling something beyond merely big. Over time it came to mean 'very', 'too', or 'highest'.