绿色
lùsè · HSK 2
green
🌿 绿 = green + 色 = color; literally 'green-color'
绿 (lǜ) means the color green, and 色 (sè) means color or hue. Many Chinese color words pair the color character with 色 to form the full noun, e.g. 红色 red-color, 蓝色 blue-color.
绿 — silk radical 纟 + 录 (phonetic)
绿 is a phono-semantic compound. The silk radical 纟 (糸) signals the original sense of a dyed silk color, while 录 supplies the sound. It came to mean the green color produced by such dyes, and now refers to green in general.
色 — person 人 (top) + kneeling figure 卩 (bottom)
Originally a pictograph showing one person above another, traditionally interpreted as depicting facial expressions or intimate posture between two people. The earliest meaning was 'facial expression' or 'countenance,' which extended to 'appearance' and eventually 'color' (the look of things). The 'shǎi' reading is a colloquial variant used for everyday color words.