碎
suì · HSK 5
break to pieces
💔 碎 = 石 stone + 卒 soldier; soldiers smashing stones into fragments
The radical 石 means stone and 卒 means soldier or foot-troop. Together they give the sense of stones being battered into broken pieces. Sui sounds like English 'sway' — things that sway too far snap and shatter.
碎 — stone radical 石 + 卒 (zú, phonetic)
碎 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The stone radical 石 carries the meaning, suggesting things being broken into small pieces like crushed stone. The right side 卒 (zú) provides the phonetic clue to its pronunciation suì, meaning 'to shatter' or 'fragmentary'.