病気
びょうき · byouki · JLPT N5 · noun
illness
🤒💊 病気 = sick (病) + spirit/energy (気): your energy has gone ill
病 means sick, 気 is the life energy found in 元気 (genki, healthy). Swap 元 (origin) for 病 (sick) and healthy energy becomes sick energy. Sound hook: byouki ends in ki, just like genki, its opposite.
病 — sickness radical 疒 + 丙 (bǐng, phonetic)
病 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The radical 疒 depicts a person lying on a bed and signals illness or ailment. The component 丙 supplies the sound (bǐng → bìng). Originally 病 referred to a serious illness, contrasted with 疾 for a lighter ailment; today it broadly means 'sick' or 'disease.'