风和日丽
fēng hé rì lì · HSK 7
fine sunny weather
☀️🍃 风 wind + 和 mild + 日 sun + 丽 beautiful
Four-character idiom stacking weather words: gentle wind plus bright sun equals fine spring weather. 和 here means mild/harmonious, 丽 means lovely — same 丽 as in 美丽 (beautiful).
风 — 几 (table) + 虫 (insect)
Originally written 鳳 (phoenix), later simplified. The traditional form 風 contains 虫 (insect), reflecting an old belief that wind brought insects or that creatures stirred with the wind. The modern simplified 风 keeps 几 as an outer frame around 㐅.
和 — grain 禾 (phonetic) + mouth 口
和 is a phono-semantic compound: 禾 (grain) gives the sound and 口 (mouth) hints at meaning, originally suggesting voices joining in agreement or song. From this it came to mean harmony, peace, and 'together with'. In Japanese it also became the native word for Japan itself.
日 — pictograph of the sun
日 is a pictograph of the sun, originally drawn as a circle with a dot or stroke inside representing the sun's substance. Over time the round shape was squared off into the modern rectangular form. It means 'sun' and by extension 'day'.