About
杵 (chǔ) is a phono-semantic compound formed by the semantic radical 木 (wood) and the phonetic component 午 (wǔ). It primarily denotes a pestle, a heavy, wooden, club-shaped tool used for pounding or grinding substances like grain or medicine in a mortar. From this concrete object, the meaning naturally extended to the action of pounding or poking with a blunt instrument, though the wooden pestle remains its core sense.
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