跟上
gēn shàng · HSK 7
to keep pace with
🏃♂️💨 跟 = follow + 上 = up; follow up to catch up
跟 means to follow or heel, and 上 means up or onto. Together 跟上 literally reads as follow-up — staying on the heels of someone moving ahead, i.e. keeping pace or catching up.
跟 — foot radical 足 + 艮 (phonetic)
A semantic-phonetic compound. The left side 足 (foot) gives the meaning, since 跟 originally referred to the heel of the foot. The right side 艮 supplies the sound. From 'heel' it extended to 'follow behind,' and in modern Chinese it also works as 'with' or 'and.'
上 — horizontal line above a baseline
上 is an indicative character (指事): a short stroke placed above a longer reference line shows the concept of 'above' or 'up'. The earliest oracle-bone forms used two horizontal lines for this; the modern shape added a vertical stroke for clarity. The core meaning of 'upper, above, to ascend' has stayed stable for millennia.