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The character 矻 is a phono-semantic compound: 石 (stone) provides the meaning, and 乞 (to beg) the sound. Historically, it appears almost exclusively in the reduplicated binomial 矻矻 (kūkū), describing toil with extreme diligence and exhaustion. The stone radical suggests the back-breaking work of breaking or moving rocks, a concrete sense that later extended to any persistent, strenuous effort or industriousness.
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