让座
ràng zuò · HSK 6
to give up one's seat for sb
💺🤝 rang = yield/let + zuo = seat — literally yield-the-seat
Rang means to yield or make way, zuo means seat. Together they describe the polite act of standing up so someone else can sit down, like offering your bus seat to an elderly person.
让 — speech radical 讠(言) + 襄 (phonetic)
A semantic-phonetic compound: 讠(言) 'speech' suggests the meaning, while 襄 supplies the sound. The original sense involved blaming or reproaching with words, then shifted through 'yield in argument' to today's meanings of 'yield, allow, let' and 'cause (someone to do something).'
座 — 广 (shelter) + 坐 (to sit)
Originally written as 坐, meaning 'to sit' (two people 人人 sitting on the ground 土). The shelter radical 广 was added to specify the place where one sits — a seat, throne, or platform. 坐 remained the verb 'to sit,' while 座 became the noun 'seat.'