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The character 狷 combines the dog radical on the left with the phonetic 肙 on the right, originally suggesting animal-like behavior. Its meaning shifted to describe human traits: someone cautious, overly timid, or stubbornly clinging to principles and refusing to conform. Famously contrasted with words for wildness in Confucian philosophy, 狷 denotes a person so scrupulously restrained that they avoid any wrongdoing, making it an important ethical-psychological descriptor in classical moral discourse.
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