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The character 抟 (traditional form 摶) is a verb that means to roll something into a ball with the hands, or to mold and knead a pliable material. It is a phono-semantic compound: the left-side radical 扌, representing the hand, signals that the action involves manual manipulation, while the right-side component 专, simplified from the traditional phonetic 專, supplies the pronunciation. Historically, 抟 was used for working clay, shaping dough, or forming mud into spherical shapes, especially in construction and craft contexts. In classical Chinese literature, the character also appears to describe strong winds or birds of prey circling upwards, a spiraling, gathering motion that mirrors the physical act of rolling material into a cohesive ball between the palms.
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