About
苊 (è) is a modern scientific coinage for the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon acenaphthene. It is a phono-semantic compound with the grass radical 艹 (cǎo) on top, adopted by modern Chinese chemists to categorize organic compounds of botanical or carbon-based derivation. The phonetic component 厄 (è) below, while independently meaning 'disaster' or 'hardship,' is used here purely for its sound to approximate the Western name. The character has no historical or classical usage and appears only in modern chemistry textbooks and technical literature.
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