设计师
shèjìshī · HSK 6
designer
📐✏️ 设计 (design/plan) + 师 (master) = the master who designs
师 is the professional suffix in 老师 (teacher) and 工程师 (engineer). Here it labels someone whose craft is 设计 — planning and designing things.
设 — speech 讠 + hand holding tool 殳
设 combines 讠 (speech) with 殳 (a hand wielding a tool or weapon), suggesting giving orders to set something up. The original sense was to arrange or establish through command, which extended to today's meanings of 'set up,' 'design,' or 'suppose.'
计 — speech radical 讠 (言) + ten 十
计 is a semantic compound: 言 'speech/words' plus 十 'ten', suggesting counting or reckoning aloud. The original sense was to calculate or tally numbers, which extended to 'plan, scheme, plot' — any kind of mental reckoning. Modern uses like 计算 (calculate) and 计划 (plan) preserve both threads.