About
The character 崾 is a phono-semantic compound created to name a specific landform. Its left side, the mountain radical 山, identifies it as a terrain feature, while the right side 要 provides the sound yao and connects conceptually to 腰 'waist', with which it shares a phonetic root. The character thus denotes the 'waist' of a mountain: either the midpoint of a slope or a narrow, waist-like pass between higher ground. It appears primarily in place names in northern China, such as Yaoping, where it refers to settlements located on these mid-mountain landforms.
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