课程
kèchéng · HSK 3
course
📚 课 = lesson + 程 journey/process; a journey of lessons
课 means lesson or class; 程 means process, journey, or stage. Together 课程 is the whole sequence of lessons — a course or curriculum. Think of it as the planned route through a subject, lesson by lesson.
课 — speech radical 讠(言) + fruit/result 果
课 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The left side 讠(言 'speech') gives the meaning, since the original sense involved oral examination or assessment. The right side 果 ('fruit, result') supplies the sound 'guǒ', which shifted to 'kè'. The meaning later broadened from 'test' to 'lesson' or 'class'.