About
The character 瘰 (luǒ) is a phono-semantic compound used in traditional Chinese medicine. It combines the sickness radical 疒 (chuáng), which indicates a medical context, with the inner component 累 (lèi), meaning "tired" or "accumulated", to provide the pronunciation. The character appears almost exclusively in the medical term 瘰疬 (luǒlì), denoting scrofula or chronic swelling of the neck's lymph nodes, often associated with tuberculosis. Its meaning has remained strictly within this pathological scope, with no figurative or colloquial uses.