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偾, together with its traditional counterpart 僨, is a phono-semantic compound meaning to ruin, spoil, or cause failure. It combines the standing person radical 亻 on the left, indicating a human action or state, with the phonetic component 贲 (bēn or fèn; traditional 賁) which supplies the sound. Historically, the character appears in classical idioms and texts to depict the disastrous downfall of a person's plans or career, often connoting overwhelming collapse brought about by human error. Its usage later narrowed to formal, literary contexts, surviving in set phrases that describe catastrophic blunders or ruined affairs.
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