马桶
mǎ tǒng · HSK 7
toilet bowl
🚽 马桶 = 马 horse + 桶 bucket; the old horse-stable bucket became the toilet
桶 means bucket or pail (tǒng), and 马 is horse (mǎ). The pairing names a bucket-shaped vessel; tǒng also echoes the English tone of tongue when you say mah-tong.
马 — pictograph of a horse (simplified from 馬)
马 is a pictograph that originally depicted a horse in profile, with mane, legs, and tail clearly visible in the oracle bone and bronze script forms. The traditional form 馬 still preserves four dots representing the legs. The modern simplified form 马 streamlines these strokes but retains the same meaning: horse.
桶 — wood radical 木 + 甬 (yǒng, phonetic)
桶 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The wood radical 木 signals the meaning — a container traditionally made of wood — while 甬 supplies the sound, related to the modern reading tǒng. It originally referred to wooden buckets or barrels, and now denotes buckets and tub-shaped containers in general.