饮水
yǐn shuǐ · HSK 7
drinking water
🚰💧 饮水 = 饮 (drink) + 水 (water) = drinking water
饮 yǐn means to drink; 水 shuǐ means water. Stack them and you get the water that is for drinking. The 氵 left-side strokes in both characters are the water radical, a written cue that the whole word is about liquid.
水 — pictograph of flowing water
水 is a pictograph depicting a stream of flowing water, with the central line representing the main current and the side strokes showing splashing droplets or ripples. In oracle bone script it was drawn even more clearly as a wavy vertical line with branches. It retains its original meaning of 'water' and also serves as a radical, often appearing in the compressed form 氵.