饼干
bǐng gān · HSK 5
cookie
🍪 饼 (flat cake) + 干 (dry) = dry flat cake = biscuit/cracker
饼 covers flat round baked goods (pancakes, flatbreads); 干 means dry. A dry flat cake is a cracker or cookie. Measure word 片 (piàn) counts thin flat pieces, fitting biscuits perfectly.
饼 — food radical 飠/食 + 并 (bìng, phonetic)
饼 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The left side 食/飠 ('food, eat') signals the meaning category, while the right side 并 supplies the sound. Originally referring to round flat wheat cakes, it now broadly names cakes, biscuits, and pancakes.
干 — pictograph of a forked weapon/shield
干 originally depicted a forked wooden weapon or shield used in ancient warfare, giving the early sense of 'to offend' or 'to oppose.' Over time it took on extended meanings like 'to concern' and 'trunk/stem.' In modern simplified Chinese it also absorbed 乾 (dry) and 幹 (to do; trunk), so one character now covers several unrelated words.