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The character 萘 (nài) was coined as a scientific term for naphthalene, directly transcribing the Western chemical name. It is a phono-semantic compound: the grass radical 艹 (cǎo) appears at the top, and in Chinese chemical nomenclature it systematically denotes organic compounds, particularly aromatic hydrocarbons often derived from plants. The lower component 奈 (nài) serves as a phonetic, approximating the first syllable of "naphthalene". This construction exemplifies the standardized method of absorbing foreign scientific vocabulary by combining semantic radicals with phonetic elements.
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