味噌 (miso: fermented bean paste) tasty food + boisterous
We’ve seen that the second kanji in 味噌 is ateji; that’s why the breakdown makes no sense. Actually, we could just as easily classify the whole compound as ateji, because this word came to Japanese from Korean and originally looked like this: 密祖. Those kanji were also stand-ins, chosen because they could supply the sounds MI and SO. In terms of meaning, the characters were useless, breaking down as density + ancestor. By contrast, at least the meaning of the first kanji in 味噌 seems appropriate for this compound.
