痰
tán · HSK 7
phlegm
🤧 tán sounds like TAR — thick black tar in your throat is phlegm
tán (phlegm) sounds like English tar: the sticky mucus you cough up clogs the chest like tar. The character 痰 = the sickness radical 疒 wrapped around 炎 (inflammation, two fires), so it literally reads as the illness of inflamed airways.
痰 — sickness radical 疒 + 炎 (flame, phonetic)
痰 is a phono-semantic compound. The outer 疒 marks it as illness-related, while 炎 (yán, 'flame/inflammation') hints at the sound and suggests the hot, inflamed quality traditional medicine linked to phlegm. The character came to mean phlegm or mucus produced during illness.