画蛇添足
huà shé tiān zú · HSK 7
fig. to ruin the effect by adding sth superfluous
🐍🦵 huà shé tiān zú = draw + snake + add + foot; snakes have no feet, so adding them ruins it
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.
蛇 — insect radical 虫 + 它 (phonetic)
Originally 它 was a pictograph of a snake, showing its head and coiled body. When 它 was borrowed for the pronoun 'it', the insect/reptile radical 虫 was added to 它 to create 蛇, preserving the original snake meaning. So 虫 gives the category (creature) and 它 supplies the sound.
添 — water radical 氵 + 忝 (phonetic)
添 is a phono-semantic compound. The water radical 氵 hints at the meaning 'to add water, to pour in more,' while 忝 supplies the sound. From the literal sense of topping up liquid, it broadened to mean 'to add' or 'to append' anything.
足 — top 口 (mouth/enclosure) + bottom 止 (foot)
Originally a pictograph of a leg and foot, with the upper square representing the knee or shin and the lower part 止 depicting the foot itself. It primarily means 'foot' and by extension 'sufficient' or 'enough,' a meaning shift likely from the idea of standing firmly or having a solid footing.