船只
chuánzhī · HSK 6
ship
🚢 船 = boat + 只 (measure word for vessels)
船只 is a compound where 船 means boat/ship and 只 is the classifier for boats. Together they form a general term covering all watercraft — ships, vessels, marine craft.
船 — boat radical 舟 + 㕣 (phonetic)
船 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The left side 舟 depicts a boat and gives the meaning, while the right side 㕣 originally suggested the sound. Together they refer to a ship or vessel, a meaning that has stayed stable since early seal script.
只 — mouth 口 + bird tail 八
Originally a pictograph showing a bird (口 as body) with its tail feathers (八) spread, meaning a single bird. It was later borrowed phonetically to write the grammatical particle and adverb meaning 'only' or 'just,' which became its dominant modern use.