洗剤
せんざい · senzai · JLPT N3 · noun
detergent
🧴🫧 洗剤 = wash (洗) + agent (剤): the washing agent
洗 (sen) means wash, as in 洗濯 sentaku, laundry. 剤 (zai) means a chemical agent or drug, as in 薬剤 yakuzai, medicine. So a washing agent is detergent. Sound hook: sen-zai, cleaned with no sense of grime.
洗 — water radical 氵 + 先 (xiān)
A semantic-phonetic compound. The water radical 氵 indicates the meaning (washing with water), while 先 supplies the sound, originally close to xiǎn/xǐ. The character has long meant 'to wash' or 'rinse,' and by extension 'to cleanse' or 'wash away.'