推薦
すいせん · suisen · JLPT N3 · noun
recommendation
👍 推薦 = push (推) + put forward (薦): pushing someone forward
推 means to push and 薦 means to recommend or put forward. A recommendation is literally pushing a candidate forward. Sound hook: sui-sen is a homophone of 水仙 (narcissus), so the same reading covers both words.
推 — hand radical 扌 + 隹 (short-tailed bird)
A semantic-phonetic compound: the hand radical 扌 gives the meaning 'to push' or act with the hand, while 隹 supplies the sound (originally close to 'tui'). The core sense has stayed remarkably stable, expanding from physical pushing to figurative uses like 'recommend' or 'infer'.