痛心
tòngxīn · HSK 7
grieved
💔 痛 pain + 心 heart = a pained, grieving heart; to be deeply hurt
痛 (tòng) means pain or ache; 心 (xīn) means heart. Together the literal pain-of-the-heart names that harrowing, grieved feeling. The xīn here also echoes the 心 in other emotion words, so a heart radical flags the sense as inner and emotional.
痛 — sickness radical 疒 + 甬 (yǒng, phonetic)
痛 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The 疒 radical depicts a person on a sickbed and signals illness or pain. The component 甬 supplies the sound, historically close to 'tòng'. Together they convey bodily ache, later extended to emotional pain and the adverbial sense 'thoroughly'.
心 — pictograph of a heart with chambers and aorta
心 is a pictograph showing a stylized heart, with strokes representing the organ's chambers and the aorta at the top. Originally meaning the physical heart, it broadened to cover mind, feelings, and intentions, since ancient Chinese thought located thinking and emotion in the heart.