漫画
mànhuà · HSK 5
caricature
📚 漫 (free/overflowing) + 画 (drawing) = free-flowing drawings
漫 means overflowing or unrestrained, 画 means drawing or painting. Together: drawings that flow freely across panels — the Chinese term for comics, manga, and cartoons, borrowed by Japanese as manga.
漫 — water radical 氵 + 曼 màn (phonetic)
漫 is a phono-semantic compound: the water radical 氵 gives the meaning and 曼 supplies the sound. It originally described water overflowing or spreading without bounds, and from that came extended senses like 'free, unrestrained, aimless,' as in 漫步 'to stroll' or 浪漫 'romantic.'
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.