茶色
ちゃいろ · chairo · JLPT N5 · noun
brown
🍵🟤 茶色 = tea + colour: the colour of brewed tea is brown
茶 (cha) is tea and 色 (iro) is colour, so chairo is literally tea-colour. The name comes from the brown of roasted or steeped tea leaves, once also used as a dye, not from green tea. Same pattern as 灰色 (ash-colour = grey).
茶 — grass radical 艹 + 余 (phonetic)
茶 combines the grass radical 艹, indicating a plant, with 余 serving as the phonetic component. It originally derived from the older character 荼, which referred broadly to bitter herbs; a stroke was dropped during the Tang dynasty to distinguish the tea plant specifically. Today it means tea.
色 — person 人 (top) + kneeling figure 卩 (bottom)
Originally a pictograph showing one person above another, traditionally interpreted as depicting facial expressions or intimate posture between two people. The earliest meaning was 'facial expression' or 'countenance,' which extended to 'appearance' and eventually 'color' (the look of things). The 'shǎi' reading is a colloquial variant used for everyday color words.