餐饮
cānyǐn · HSK 5
catering
🍽️ 餐 = meal + 饮 = drink; together: food and beverage service
餐 (cān) means meal and 饮 (yǐn) means to drink. Combined, 餐饮 covers the whole food-and-drink business: catering, dining, hospitality. Think of it as the industry term for everything served at a table.
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.'