泪

Three-drops water on the left, indexes 泪 in the liquid family with 河, 海, 流, 汗. 泪 names tears, the salt water that wells out of the eye, so the radical names the liquid precisely. The simplified glyph rebuilt the older 淚 (with 戾 phonetic) into a transparent compound where both pieces carry meaning.

Right side 目, pictograph of an eye rotated to stand vertically. Provides semantic content: water + eye = tear. A pure compound ideograph: both pieces carry meaning and the sound lèi is opaque. One of the cleanest reform-era glyphs, replacing 淚's older phonetic 戾 with a transparent picture.