火箭
huǒ jiàn · HSK 6
rocket
🚀🔥 火箭 = fire + arrow — a fire-arrow is literally a rocket
Ancient Chinese rockets were arrows with gunpowder tubes strapped on, so the name stuck: fire (火 huǒ) + arrow (箭 jiàn). The word is a fossil of the invention itself.
火 — pictograph of flames rising
火 is a pictograph showing flames rising upward from a fire, with the central stroke as the main blaze and the side strokes as sparks. The ancient oracle bone form looked even more clearly like a burning flame. It still means 'fire' today and serves as a common radical in characters related to heat, burning, or cooking.
箭 — bamboo radical 竹 + 前 (qián, phonetic)
A semantic-phonetic compound: the bamboo radical 竹 on top signals the material, since ancient arrows were made of bamboo shafts, while 前 below supplies the sound (qián → jiàn). The original meaning 'arrow' has stayed stable from Classical Chinese to today.