About
耜 is a phono-semantic compound. Its left component, the radical 耒 (lěi), depicts a wooden plow and anchors the character’s meaning in agriculture, while the right component 㠯 (yǐ) provides the phonetic value. The character was created to denote the plowshare, the blade that cuts the soil. Its meaning remains specifically tied to this implement, with no abstract extensions, appearing primarily in historical agricultural texts and classical poetry about farming.