厘

Cliff radical wrapping the top-left — a sheltering overhang of rock. The indexing element. The radical is structural rather than semantic here: 厘 is a simplified replacement for traditional 釐, and the modern shape stacks the inner 里 under the 厂 overhang for a compact silhouette. Same radical-厂 graph-family includes 厚 (thick), 原 (origin), 厦 (mansion).

Inside 里 supplies the sound — lǐ drifting to lí through tone shift. 里 itself depicts a field (田) above earth (土), the seed for 'village, neighbourhood, inner.' Helpfully, 里 was also a classical unit of distance — and 厘 is a tiny unit of measurement (a hundredth, a thousandth). The phonetic carries both reading and a faint measurement flavour.