癌
がん · gan · JLPT N3 · noun
cancer
🦀 癌 = 疒 sickness + 嵒 rocky crag: an illness of hard, stone-like lumps
The 疒 radical (a sickbed) marks diseases. 嵒 stacks three stones 品 on a mountain 山, meaning a craggy rock, since old doctors described tumours as hard as stone. The crab: cancer comes from the Greek karkinos, meaning crab.
癌 — sickness radical 疒 + 嵒 (rocks/cliff)
癌 combines the sickness radical 疒 with 嵒, which depicts piled rocks or a rocky cliff. The rocks suggest hard, lumpy growths, fitting the meaning 'cancer' (hard tumors). It is a relatively modern coinage, adopted in the 19th–20th century to translate the Western medical concept.