Several parts combine into one character.

机 is one of the most consequential simplification collisions in the entire CJK system — a single character that means radically different things in Mainland Chinese versus Japanese / traditional contexts. The original 机 was a phonetic-semantic compound: 木 (wood) + 几 (a small low table with legs). The classical meaning was "small wooden table / desk." This meaning persists in Japanese today, where つくえ (tsukue, "desk") is written 机.

But Mainland China made an extraordinary decision during the simplification reform: they assigned the simple character 机 to absorb the meaning of the entirely separate traditional character 機 (jī, "loom / mechanism / machine / opportunity"). The result is that the same printed shape 机 means different things in different scripts: in Japanese and Korean texts it means "desk," but in Mainland Chinese texts it means "machine." Few CJK characters create as much potential for cross-language misreading.

Korean reading "gwe." 机 is barely used in modern Korean — surviving only in archaic compounds like 几案 (gwean, desk — historical/literary), with everyday "desk" written in pure hangeul (책상, chaeksang). Critically, the Korean character for "machine" is 機 — distinct from 机 — so Korean does not share Mainland China's ambiguity.

Mandarin jī, 1st tone — and here's where it gets interesting. In simplified Chinese, 机 = 機, ranked the 60th most common character in everyday use. 飞机 (fēijī, "flying-machine" = airplane), 手机 (shǒujī, "hand-machine" = mobile phone — one of the highest-frequency words in modern Chinese), 机会 (jīhuì, opportunity), 机器 (jīqì, machine), 计算机 (jìsuànjī, computer). For Mandarin learners, 机 is encountered constantly; for Japanese and Korean readers seeing Chinese text, 机 in 飞机 demands a mental translation to 機 to make sense.

Japanese on-reading キ (ki) is rare on its own. The kun-reading つくえ (tsukue) dominates: 机 (tsukue, desk), 勉強机 (benkyōzukue, study desk — every Japanese student's name for their childhood desk), 学習机 (gakushūzukue, learning desk). Japan kept 机 strictly in its original "desk" meaning, never blurring it with 機 (machine) which remained a separate kanji.

Memory aid: same character, different meanings across regions. In Korea/Japan, 机 is a desk; in Mainland China, 机 is a machine (because it stands in for the simplified 機). When you see 飞机 (airplane) in Mandarin, mentally substitute 飛 + 機 = 飛機. The shapes look the same; the meanings are worlds apart.