Several parts combine into one character.

Compound ideograph: 食 (food) + 欠 (a person with mouth wide open, leaning forward) = to drink. 欠 alone shows a person yawning or gaping, ready to swallow. Place that next to a vessel of food, and the picture is unmistakable: someone leaning toward a cup, mouth open, ready to drink. Three forms: 繁體 飲 / 新字体 飲 / 简体 饮.

Mandarin: yǐn, dipping 3rd tone. Like 食, the colloquial Mandarin verb for "to drink" is something else: 喝 (hē, level 1st tone). 饮 in modern Chinese is largely literary or in fixed compounds. Common compounds: 饮料 (yǐnliào, beverage), 饮食 (yǐnshí, diet / food and drink), 饮水 (yǐnshuǐ, drinking water), 饮酒 (yǐnjiǔ, to drink alcohol). The Cantonese tradition 饮茶 (yǐnchá / yum cha) — "to drink tea" — refers to the dim sum brunch tradition; this is one of the few cases where 饮 still feels everyday in spoken Chinese.

Japanese: on-reading イン (in) for compounds — 飲食 (inshoku, food and drink), 飲料 (inryō, beverage), 飲酒 (inshu, drinking alcohol). Kun-reading の.む (no.mu) is the everyday verb — 飲む (nomu, to drink), 飲み物 (nomimono, drinkable thing / beverage), 飲み会 (nomikai, drinking party — a major Japanese social institution).

The verb 飲む in Japanese stretches beyond drinking: 薬を飲む (kusuri o nomu, to take medicine — "drink medicine"), 涙を飲む (namida o nomu, to swallow tears / endure silently). The character carries the full sense of "consume liquid".

Memory aid: a person with mouth wide open beside a food vessel — drinking what's offered.