看来
kànlái · HSK 4
it appears
👀 看 = look + 来 = come; 'looks-come' → 'it looks as if'
看 (kàn) means 'to look/see' and 来 (lái) means 'to come'. Together 看来 literally reads 'looking-come', used to introduce an inference — 'from what comes into view, it appears that...'
看 — hand 手 over eye 目
看 is an associative compound showing a hand (手, simplified to 龹) shading an eye (目), depicting someone shielding their eyes to look into the distance. From this concrete gesture it broadened to mean 'to look,' 'to watch,' and later 'to read' or 'to consider.'
来 — pictograph of a wheat plant with grain heads
来 originally depicted a stalk of wheat with drooping grain heads, and meant 'wheat' in oracle bone script. It was later borrowed phonetically to write the unrelated verb 'to come,' which became its dominant meaning. The original 'wheat' sense was taken over by 麥 (now 麦).