绿茶
lǜ chá · HSK 3
green tea
🍵 绿茶 = 绿 (green) + 茶 (tea)
A straight compound: 绿 lǜ means green, 茶 chá means tea. 茶 itself is an ancient word borrowed into many languages (cha, chai, tea all trace back to it).
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.
茶 — grass radical 艹 + 余 (phonetic)
茶 combines the grass radical 艹, indicating a plant, with 余 serving as the phonetic component. It originally derived from the older character 荼, which referred broadly to bitter herbs; a stroke was dropped during the Tang dynasty to distinguish the tea plant specifically. Today it means tea.