骗人
piàn rén · HSK 7
to cheat sb
🤥 骗 cheat + 人 person = to cheat someone, run a scam
骗 (piàn) means to deceive or swindle; 人 (rén) means person. Put them together and you get the act of cheating somebody. The 马 horse radical in 骗 hints at its origin: dishonest tricks in horse-trading.
骗 — horse radical 馬 + flat 扁 (phonetic)
A semantic-phonetic compound. The horse radical 馬 hints at the original sense of mounting a horse sideways or leaping onto it deceptively, while 扁 supplies the sound. Over time the meaning shifted from this sneaky riding motion to the broader sense of 'cheat' or 'deceive'.
人 — pictograph of a standing person
人 is a pictograph showing a person viewed from the side, with two strokes representing the legs and torso of a standing human. In oracle bone script it clearly depicted a figure leaning slightly forward. The meaning has remained 'person' or 'human' throughout its history.