暖房
だんぼう · danbou · JLPT N4 · noun
heating
🔥🏠 暖房 = warm (暖) + room (房): warming the room
暖 means warm (as in 暖かい, atatakai) and 房 means room or chamber. Its opposite swaps one character: 冷房 (reibou) = cool + room, air conditioning. Learn the pair together: dan-bou heats, rei-bou cools.
暖 — sun radical 日 + 爰 (yuán, phonetic)
暖 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The 日 'sun' radical carries the meaning of warmth, while 爰 supplies the sound (historically close to 'nuǎn'). It originally described the warmth of sunlight and broadened to mean 'warm' in general — both physical heat and figurative warmth like kindness.