糟糕
zāogāo · HSK 5
Too bad!
💩 糟 (dregs/mess) + 糕 (cake) = a cake of dregs, i.e. a mess
糟 originally meant the dregs left from brewing wine, extended to mean rotten or messy. 糕 is cake. Together: a cake made of dregs — something gone wrong. Used as an exclamation like Oh no! or What a mess!
糟 — rice radical 米 + 曹 (cáo, phonetic)
A semantic-phonetic compound. The rice radical 米 signals the meaning—grain dregs left over from making wine—while 曹 supplies the sound (cáo→zāo). From 'wine lees' the meaning extended to 'rotten, spoiled,' and figuratively to 'a mess' or 'terrible,' as in 糟糕.