About
猹 is a phono-semantic compound denoting a wild, badger-like mammal that forages in fields. Its left component, the animal radical "犭", provides the semantic category of a beast, while the right component "查" supplies the phonetic value. This character holds a unique place in the lexicon, as it was coined by the author Lu Xun in his literary works to represent a colloquial rural term for the animal, which previously had no standard written form. Its etymological origin is therefore firmly rooted in early twentieth-century literature, and its usage remains largely confined to discussions of that literary corpus and the agricultural pests it describes.