There are mnemonics to help remember the characters. For example: - 嫉 (jealousy) is composed of 女 (woman) and 疾 (illness, hatred): jealousy is a feminine illne

There are mnemonics to help remember the characters. For example: - 嫉 (jealousy) is composed of 女 (woman) and 疾 (illness, hatred): jealousy is a feminine illness or a manifestation of feminine hatred; - 惑 (to be puzzled) is composed of 心 (heart, intention) 或 (maybe, possibility): an unsure heart; - 愚 (to be stupid) is composed of 心 (heart, intention) 禸 (trample) 田 (field): the heart of someone who tramples a field (and thus ruining the crops); etc. You often have to be creative. If I understand the research correctly[0], finding such interpretations used to be common, and different people would debate different interpretations. I've actually wrote a tool to help studying Chinese from that perspective, by allowing to read classics such as the Thousand Character Classic[1], and systematically decomposing characters. [0]: http://crlao.ehess.fr/docannexe/file/1513/bottero.wen_zi.pdf http://crlao.ehess.fr/docannexe/file/1513/bottero.wen_zi.pdf [1]: https://zhongmu.eu/book.html#c=2;w=0;b=qian-zi-wen https://zhongmu.eu/book.html#c=2;w=0;b=qian-zi-wen (~unusable on mobile screens).