渠道 = channel (literal or figurative), used in both irrigation and business contexts.
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As a pronoun meaning 'him' or 'her', 渠 is literary and archaic, also dialectal in some southern varieties. In modern Chinese 渠 means canal or channel; the pronoun sense appears only in classical texts.
Top-left water radical - three drops, the side-form of 水. Indexes 渠 in the watercourse family alongside 河 river, 江 large river, 沟 ditch, 池 pool. Anchors the meaning: a canal is an artificial channel for moving water across land.
Top-right 巨 - originally a carpenter's measuring square, later 'huge.' Supplies the phonetic frame: jù shifting to qú via well-attested initial alternation. Same phonetic in 距 distance, 拒 to refuse, 苣 a plant. Hints faintly that a canal is a measured, engineered cut through the land.
Bottom 木 - a tree pictograph, four strokes branching from a central trunk. In 渠 it represents the wooden lining or planking used to reinforce a canal's walls. Together the three pieces 'water + measure + wood' picture an engineered, plank-lined waterway - the original sense of a man-made canal.
