About
The character 砷, representing the chemical element arsenic, is a phono-semantic compound formed in the late imperial or early modern period to designate this specific substance. Its structure combines the semantic component 石, meaning "stone", which categorizes it as a mineral, with the phonetic component 申, which provides its pronunciation shēn. The character's etymology is directly tied to this compositional logic, created for scientific nomenclature rather than derived from classical usage. Since its inception, the meaning of 砷 has remained exclusively fixed on the element arsenic, with no semantic drift or expansion recorded.