酒吧

jiǔ bā · HSK 4

bar

🍺🍷 酒吧 = 酒 (alcohol) + 吧 (bar/place suffix)

酒 means alcohol or wine; 吧 is a phonetic loan from English 'bar' that now marks venue-type words like 网吧 (internet cafe) and 咖啡吧 (coffee bar). Together: an alcohol-bar, i.e. a pub.

酒 — water 氵 + 酉 (wine vessel)
酒 combines 氵 (water) with 酉, an ancient pictograph of a wine jar with a narrow neck. 酉 alone originally meant fermented liquor, but as it was borrowed for the tenth earthly branch, the water radical was added to keep the 'alcoholic drink' meaning clear.

吧 — mouth radical 口 + 巴 (phonetic, 'ba')
吧 is a phono-semantic compound: 口 ('mouth') signals it relates to speech, while 巴 supplies the sound 'ba'. It's a relatively modern character used mainly as a sentence-final particle softening suggestions or marking guesses, and also transliterates foreign 'ba' sounds, as in 酒吧 ('bar').

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