缩水
suō shuǐ · HSK 7
to shrink
👕💧 缩 (shrink/contract) + 水 (water) = shrinks in the wash; figuratively profits shrink too
The two characters are literally shrink + water, naming what happens to a cotton shirt after a hot wash. The figurative sense reuses the same logic: budgets or profits that get smaller are said to 缩水, as if soaked and shrunk.
缩 — silk radical 糹 + 宿 (lodge, phonetic)
A semantic-phonetic compound. The silk radical 糹 carries the meaning, since shrinking and tightening were associated with drawing in cords or fabric. The right side 宿 (sù) supplies the sound. The original sense of binding cloth tight extended to the modern meaning 'to shrink' or 'contract.'
水 — pictograph of flowing water
水 is a pictograph depicting a stream of flowing water, with the central line representing the main current and the side strokes showing splashing droplets or ripples. In oracle bone script it was drawn even more clearly as a wavy vertical line with branches. It retains its original meaning of 'water' and also serves as a radical, often appearing in the compressed form 氵.