扑

Left indexing hand radical 扌 — left-side variant of 手. Anchors 扑 in the hand-action family alongside 打 (hit), 推 (push), 抓 (grab), 拍 (pat). To pounce or lunge is fundamentally a hand-and-body movement: the hand strikes forward to seize.

Right 卜 supplies the sound (bǔ → pū through b/p alternation). The traditional 撲 had a much more elaborate 菐 phonetic; the 1956 reform reduced it to the minimal 卜, which kept just enough phonetic match. 卜 itself depicts the cracks in a heated tortoise-shell used in oracle-bone divination; pure phonetic role here. Same simplified family: 朴 (simple), 仆 (servant).