漫画
まんが · manga · JLPT N4 · noun
comedian
📚 漫画 = rambling (漫) + drawing (画): free-flowing sketches
漫 means loose, aimless, unrestrained; 画 means drawing. So manga is literally whimsical drawing. English borrowed the word directly, so the sound man-ga already matches the meaning you know.
漫 — water radical 氵 + 曼 màn (phonetic)
漫 is a phono-semantic compound: the water radical 氵 gives the meaning and 曼 supplies the sound. It originally described water overflowing or spreading without bounds, and from that came extended senses like 'free, unrestrained, aimless,' as in 漫步 'to stroll' or 浪漫 'romantic.'
画 — hand 一 + field 田 + frame 凵
Originally a pictograph of a hand holding a brush drawing boundaries around a field, depicting the act of marking out land. The top once showed a brush (聿), and 田 represents the field being divided. Over time it came to mean 'to draw, paint' and also 'a stroke' in characters.