止咳
zhǐ ké · HSK 7
to suppress coughing
🛑🤧 止咳 = 止 (stop) + 咳 (cough): stop the cough
止 means to stop or halt, and 咳 means cough. Put together, 止咳 literally reads stop-cough, i.e. to suppress or relieve coughing. Common on cough-syrup labels.
止 — pictograph of a foot/toe
止 originally depicted a human foot with toes, shown as a footprint on the ground. From this concrete image of a foot it came to mean 'to stop' or 'halt' — the place where a step ends. It also serves as a component in many characters relating to feet, walking, or stopping, such as 步 and 正.
咳 — mouth 口 + child 亥
A phono-semantic compound: 口 (mouth) gives the meaning, since coughing comes from the mouth, while 亥 supplies the sound. Originally the character could mean a child's laugh (read hāi), but its dominant modern sense is 'to cough' (ké).