挑む
いどむ · idomu · JLPT N1 · verb-godan
to challenge
🥊 挑 = hand radical 扌 + 兆 (omen): raise your hand to take on a challenge
Ancient diviners read omens from cracks in heated bone, so 兆 means sign or omen. Add the hand radical and you get 挑, a hand reaching toward a sign to start a contest. Use it for taking on a rival or a difficult task.
挑 — hand radical 扌 + 兆 (zhào, omen)
A semantic-phonetic compound: the hand radical 扌 signals a hand action, while 兆 supplies the sound. The original sense was to lift or carry on a shoulder pole, which extended to picking out, selecting, and stirring up — hence today's meanings 'to choose' (tiāo) and 'to provoke' (tiǎo).