跑道
pǎodào · HSK 7
path
🏃🛫 跑 run + 道 road = the road you run on: a track or runway
跑 means run and 道 means road or way. Put them together and you get the road built for running on: an athletics track, a swimming lane, or an airport runway where planes take off.
跑 — foot 足 + wrap 包
A semantic-phonetic compound. The foot radical 足 gives the meaning (an action done with the feet), while 包 (bāo) hints at the sound, shifted to pǎo. Originally it could mean an animal pawing the ground, later generalizing to 'run'.
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.