茶道
chá dào · HSK 7
Japanese tea ceremony
🍵🎎 tea + way = the Way of Tea, a path you walk through ritual
茶 (chá) means tea, 道 (dào) means way or path. Together they name the disciplined practice of preparing and serving tea as a spiritual and aesthetic discipline — literally the road of tea.
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.
道 — 辶 (walk) + 首 (head)
Originally a compound of 辶 'walk/movement' and 首 'head', depicting a path one walks while looking ahead. The literal sense 'road, way' extended metaphorically to 'method, doctrine, the Way (Dao)'. This philosophical meaning became central in Daoist and Confucian thought.