停滞
ていたい · teitai · JLPT N1 · noun
stagnation
🚦 停 = stop, 滞 = water radical 氵 held back: flow that stopped, like a dammed stream
Read it as stop plus sluggish. The water radical 氵 in 滞 marks flow that has stalled, like a blocked pipe or a jammed road. The same stall covers stagnation, congestion and retention.
停 — person 亻 + pavilion 亭
A semantic-phonetic compound: 亻 (person) gives the meaning, while 亭 (pavilion, also pronounced tíng) supplies the sound. The image is of a person stopping at a roadside pavilion to rest, which yields the modern senses 'to stop, halt, park.'