頭痛

ずつう · zutsuu · JLPT N3 · noun

concern

🤕 頭痛 = head (頭 zu) + pain (痛 tsuu): head-pain, a headache

頭 means head and 痛 means pain, the same 痛 as in 痛い itai, it hurts. Here 頭 is read zu, as in 頭上 zujou, overhead. The ending tsuu shows up in other pains too, like 腹痛 fukutsuu, stomachache, and 歯痛 shitsuu, toothache.

痛 — sickness radical 疒 + 甬 (yǒng, phonetic)
痛 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The 疒 radical depicts a person on a sickbed and signals illness or pain. The component 甬 supplies the sound, historically close to 'tòng'. Together they convey bodily ache, later extended to emotional pain and the adverbial sense 'thoroughly'.

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