裸足

はだし · hadashi · JLPT N1 · noun

barefoot

🦶 裸 (bare) + 足 (foot) = 裸足 hadashi, barefoot. Compound of bare plus foot.

はだし is an irregular reading: 裸 (はだ, bare or naked) plus 足 (し, foot). Alone, 足 is usually read あし, so the compound shifts the reading. Hada (bare) plus shi (foot) gives hadashi.

裸 — clothes radical 衤 + fruit 果
A semantic-phonetic compound: 衤 (clothing) gives the meaning, while 果 (guǒ) supplies the sound. Originally meaning 'to strip off clothing,' it came to mean 'naked' or 'bare.' The clothing radical ironically marks the absence of clothes.

足 — top 口 (mouth/enclosure) + bottom 止 (foot)
Originally a pictograph of a leg and foot, with the upper square representing the knee or shin and the lower part 止 depicting the foot itself. It primarily means 'foot' and by extension 'sufficient' or 'enough,' a meaning shift likely from the idea of standing firmly or having a solid footing.

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