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畛 originally referred to the raised earthen paths that served as walkways and boundaries between adjacent agricultural fields. It is a phono-semantic compound: the radical 田 provides the semantic category of farmland, while the component 㐱 (zhěn) indicates the pronunciation. Over time, the meaning broadened from these concrete physical paths to any abstract boundary, limit, or distinct realm of thought, making the character a general term for borders and demarcations in formal and literary contexts.
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