闻
wén · HSK 2
smell
👃 门 (door) + 耳 (ear) — ear at the door, listening or sniffing
闻 originally meant 'to hear' (an ear 耳 inside a gate 门), and later extended to 'to smell'. Both senses share the idea of perceiving through a sense organ. Modern Mandarin 闻 = smell; 听 took over 'hear'.
闻 — gate 門 (phonetic) + ear 耳
Originally a pictograph of a person cupping a hand to the ear to listen, later restructured as a semantic-phonetic compound: 耳 (ear) gives the meaning and 門 (gate) supplies the sound. The core sense 'to hear' extended to 'news' and 'to smell', since both involve perceiving something from a distance.