馋
chán · HSK 7
to have a craving
🤤🍖 chán sounds like chan-nel — your food channel is always on
The character combines 食 (food) on the left with 免 (exempt) twisted into 兔 (rabbit) energy on the right. Nothing is exempt from your cravings — every dish calls to you like a 24/7 food channel you cant turn off.
馋 — food radical 饣 + 毚 (chán, phonetic)
A semantic-phonetic compound. The left side 饣 (food) signals the meaning—appetite, craving, gluttony. The right side 毚, depicting a hare, supplies the sound 'chán'. Originally written 饞 in traditional form, it referred to greedy hunger and later broadened to mean drooling over or craving something.