荒い
あらい · arai · JLPT N2 · i-adj
wild
🌊 arai sounds like a riot: rough, rude and wild
荒 = 艹 grass + 亡 lost + 川 river: land laid waste by floods, so wild and rough. The usual phrase is 波が荒い (nami ga arai), rough seas. Said of a person, as in 言葉が荒い, it means rough-spoken or rude.
荒 — grass radical 艹 + 巟 (phonetic, 'vast/wild')
A semantic-phonetic compound: the grass radical 艹 on top gives the meaning of overgrown vegetation, while 巟 below supplies the sound and a sense of vast wildness. Originally it described land covered in wild weeds, then extended to 'wasteland,' 'desolate,' and figuratively 'absurd' or 'famine.'