照顾

zhàogù · HSK 2

look after

👀🤲 照 = shine/illuminate + 顾 = look back/attend to

照 means to shine light on something (sun radical 灬 underneath); 顾 means to turn one's head to look after. Together: to shine attention on someone, i.e. care for them.

照 — 昭 (bright) phonetic + 灬 (fire radical)
照 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The bottom 灬 is a variant of 火 'fire', giving the meaning of light or illumination, while 昭 'bright' on top supplies the sound 'zhào' and reinforces the brightness sense. It originally meant to shine light on something, later extending to 'reflect', 'photograph', and 'according to'.

顾 — page 頁 + cliff 厃 (phonetic 雇)
顧 is a semantic-phonetic compound: 頁 (head) gives the meaning of turning the head to look back, while 雇 supplies the sound. The original sense was 'to turn and gaze,' which extended to 'consider, care for, attend to.' The simplified form 顾 keeps the same structure with 页.

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