跪
guì · HSK 6
to kneel
🧎 足 foot + 危 danger — feet folded into a precarious position
Kneeling forces your legs into an unstable, strained stance. The character pairs foot with danger, capturing exactly how precarious that posture feels on your knees.
跪 — foot 足 + phonetic 危 wēi
A semantic-phonetic compound: 足 (foot/leg) gives the meaning, since kneeling involves bending the legs, while 危 (danger, high) suggests the pronunciation guì. The original sense was to kneel down on the knees, a posture of respect or submission, and this meaning has remained stable through history.