顾不上
gù bu shàng · HSK 7
cannot attend to or manage
🙅 顾 look-after + 不 not + 上 get-to = can't get to looking after it
顾 = attend to / look after; 不上 = a resultative meaning 'unable to reach/achieve'. Together: too busy or overwhelmed to deal with something. Common with tasks, meals, sleep — things you'd handle if you had the bandwidth.
顾 — page 頁 + cliff 厃 (phonetic 雇)
顧 is a semantic-phonetic compound: 頁 (head) gives the meaning of turning the head to look back, while 雇 supplies the sound. The original sense was 'to turn and gaze,' which extended to 'consider, care for, attend to.' The simplified form 顾 keeps the same structure with 页.
不 — single pictograph; bird flying upward
Originally a pictograph in oracle bone script, traditionally interpreted as a bird flying up toward the sky and unable to come down, suggesting negation or refusal. Over time it became the standard negation word in Chinese, used before verbs and adjectives to mean 'not'.
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.