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The character 涞 is a phono-semantic compound: the water radical 氵 on the left gives it a water-related meaning, and the component 来 on the right supplies the pronunciation lái. The traditional character 淶 replaces 来 with the unsimplified form 來, but the structure remains the same. Etymologically, it was coined as a proper noun for the Lai River, a waterway in Hebei province, northern China, and it never acquired broader conversational meanings. Today, it is used almost exclusively in place names, such as the counties of Laiyuan and Laishui in Hebei.
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