热水
rè shuǐ · HSK 6
hot water
🔥💧 热 (heat) + 水 (water) = hot water
热 means hot or heat, 水 means water. Together they work like a simple label: heat-water. The reverse, 冷水 (cold water), swaps in 冷 (cold) — same pattern.
热 — 执 zhí (phonetic) + 灬 fire radical
热 is a semantic-phonetic compound: the bottom 灬 (a variant of 火 'fire') gives the meaning of heat, while 执 on top supplies the sound. Originally written 熱, it depicted fire below a phonetic element, and the meaning naturally extended from physical heat to 'hot' weather and 'enthusiastic' feelings.
水 — pictograph of flowing water
水 is a pictograph depicting a stream of flowing water, with the central line representing the main current and the side strokes showing splashing droplets or ripples. In oracle bone script it was drawn even more clearly as a wavy vertical line with branches. It retains its original meaning of 'water' and also serves as a radical, often appearing in the compressed form 氵.