聚

A phono-semantic compound:

众 / 乑 (multitude of people) — semantic component, represents a crowd or group, the distorted lower portion (乑) is 众 written in a heavily deformed cursive form, indicating the gathering of many;

取 (to take / to grasp) — phonetic component, supplies the reading 취 (chwi / qū).

Note on script variation: the lower 众 component is so distorted in the standard form that writers often substitute the visually similar 豕 or 豖. Outside mainland China, the form with three 人 radicals (人 + 亻 + 人) written as 聚 is the standard and is widely used elsewhere for being easier to remember.

취합 (聚合) — to aggregate; to converge; to combine

취락 (聚落) — settlement; village; cluster of dwellings

취집 (聚集) — to gather together; to congregate

취산 (聚散) — gathering and parting; the flux of meeting and separation

Idiomatic expressions:

취산이합 (聚散離合) — the coming together and drifting apart of people; the natural cycle of reunion and separation in human life.

In Chinese, three characters share the field of "gathering":

集 — to collect; to assemble (simple accumulation, neutral and broad). It the most general.

會 — to meet; to convene (purposeful gathering, with intent or agenda). It implies a structured or purposeful meeting.

聚 — to gather into one; to congregate (people uniting, especially family or friends; implies closeness and becoming a single whole). It carries the warmest and most intimate register.

聚 is preferred when people come together not merely by proximity but by bond — reunion, community, belonging.

Related characters:

集 — to gather; to collect (general accumulation)

會 — to meet; to convene (purposeful assembly)

散 — to scatter; to disperse (opposite of 聚)

離 — to part; to separate

合 — to unite; to join

Classical citations:

《易經》 (Book of Changes)

「方以類聚，物以群分」

"Things of a kind gather together; creatures divide by their groups."

One of the earliest classical formulations of 聚 as natural affinity — like draws to like.

《史記·貨殖列傳》 (Records of the Grand Historian)

「天下熙熙，皆為利來；天下攘攘，皆為利聚」

"All the world bustles and hurries — all come for gain; all the world jostles and crowds — all gather for profit."

A pointed use of 聚 to describe the magnetic pull of material interest.