腰
yāo · HSK 4
middle
🧍 月 (flesh) + 要 (essential) = the essential flesh-part: the waist
腰 pairs the flesh radical 月 with 要 (essential/want). The waist is the body's essential midpoint where the torso bends — hence isthmus, bend, haunch, middle.
腰 — flesh radical 月 (肉) + 要 yào (phonetic)
A semantic-phonetic compound. The 月 (flesh) radical signals a body part, while 要 supplies the sound 'yāo'. Notably, 要 itself originally depicted a person with hands on the waist, so it once meant 'waist'; when 要 shifted to mean 'want/important', 腰 was created with the flesh radical to preserve the original sense.