Etymology:

Elements  ----  Pictogram. Phonetic series 田.

A pictogram of the furrows of a cultivated field. 

Main Words:

田径     tiánjìng track and field. HSK6

Discussion and sources

Sagart (1995). The Chinese word for 'field' is 田. The character is also employed in the meanings 'to cultivate the land', 'to hunt', and as the name of a kind of drum…. In fact GJC shows that there are scholars that think the pictogram depicts a hunting round, or even a kind of hunting net. CMH thinks that it is a well enclosed field 囗, whose furrows extend in all directions 十.  Saggart goes on: “Although 田 in early China probably referred to millet fields, the word was later applied to wet rice fields after Chinese colonists expanded into the Huai and Yangzi basins, and further into south China, where the principal crop is rice.”