野餐
yě cān · HSK 7
picnic
🧺🥪 野餐 = 野 wild/outdoors + 餐 meal = an outdoor meal = picnic
野 means wild or open country and 餐 means a meal (same 餐 as in 餐厅 restaurant). Stack them and you get the outdoor meal eaten in a field: a picnic.
野 — 里 (village) + 予 (phonetic)
Originally written 埜 (forest 林 over earth 土), depicting wild land beyond cultivated fields. The modern form 野 combines 里 (village/settled land) with 予 as a phonetic component, keeping the meaning of open country, wilderness, or untamed.
餐 — 歺 (bone fragment) + 又 (hand) + 食 (food)
Originally a phono-semantic compound showing a hand (又) taking food from bones (歺), with 食 (food) as the meaning component. The top portion 'cǎn' provides the sound, while 食 indicates the meaning of eating. Over time it came to mean 'meal' or 'to eat.'