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The character 胙 (zuò) originally denoted the sacrificial meat offered to deities or ancestors in formal rituals, later distributed to participants as a tangible divine blessing. It is a phono-semantic compound: the left-side flesh radical 月 (yuè), a variant of 肉 (ròu), indicates its nature as animal offerings, while the right component 乍 (zhà) provides the pronunciation. Over time, its meaning broadened from the meat itself to abstract concepts like divine favor, imperial rewards, or the bestowal of titles by a ruler, frequently appearing in historical records of state ceremonies and ancestral worship.
Etymology Hide
