硬币
yìng bì · HSK 7
coin
🪙 硬 hard + 币 currency = the hard money you jingle: a coin
硬 means hard or solid, and 币 means currency or money. Paper money is soft, but a 硬币 is the hard metal kind. Sound: yìng bì, the second tone rising then the falling fourth.
硬 — stone 石 + 更 (gēng, phonetic)
硬 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The left side 石 'stone' gives the meaning—stones are hard—while the right side 更 originally suggested the pronunciation. From the literal sense of stone-hardness, 硬 extended to mean firm, stiff, or stubborn in both physical and figurative uses.