断水
だんすい · dansui · JLPT N2 · noun
outage
🚰 断 = cut off, 水 = water: water that has been cut off, i.e. a water outage
Same pattern as 断電 (power outage): 断 cuts off the noun that follows it, here 水 (water).
断 — thread 㡭 (silk bundle) + axe 斤
Originally written with 㡭 (entangled silk threads) on the left and 斤 (axe) on the right, depicting an axe cutting through bundled threads. From this concrete image of severing came the meanings 'to cut off,' 'to break,' and by extension 'to decide' or 'judge'—as in resolving a matter decisively.
水 — pictograph of flowing water
水 is a pictograph depicting a stream of flowing water, with the central line representing the main current and the side strokes showing splashing droplets or ripples. In oracle bone script it was drawn even more clearly as a wavy vertical line with branches. It retains its original meaning of 'water' and also serves as a radical, often appearing in the compressed form 氵.