挑戦
ちょうせん · chousen · JLPT N3 · noun
challenge
🥊 挑戦 = provoke + battle: daring someone to a fight
挑 (chō) means to provoke or stir up, as in 挑む idomu, to take on. 戦 (sen) means battle, as in 戦争 sensō, war. Provoking a battle gives you a challenge. Sound hook: chōsen sounds like chosen, as in the chosen one who takes up the challenge.
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).