油画
yóuhuà · HSK 7
oil painting
🖼️🎨 油 oil + 画 painting = oil painting (an oil-paint canvas)
油 (yóu) means oil and 画 (huà) means painting or picture, so 油画 literally reads as oil-painting. The 'canvas/canvass' senses come from the painted surface itself.
油 — water radical 氵 + 由 (yóu, phonetic)
油 is a phono-semantic compound. The 氵 radical signals a liquid, while 由 supplies the sound. Originally referring to a river name, it was extended to mean oil or fat — any thick, flowing liquid — which became its dominant modern sense.
画 — hand 一 + field 田 + frame 凵
Originally a pictograph of a hand holding a brush drawing boundaries around a field, depicting the act of marking out land. The top once showed a brush (聿), and 田 represents the field being divided. Over time it came to mean 'to draw, paint' and also 'a stroke' in characters.