About
蒺 (jí) is a phono-semantic compound that designates a specific type of thorny, creeping vegetation. The upper portion of the character is the grass radical 艹 (cǎo), which indicates the semantic category of plants, while the lower component 疾 (jí), itself meaning 'illness' or 'speed', serves purely as the phonetic. The character appears primarily in the botanical name 蒺藜 (jílí) for Tribulus terrestris, commonly called puncture vine or caltrop, a weed with sharply spiked seed pods. Because of its spiky shape, the term was adopted in ancient military language to refer to iron caltrops scattered on the ground to hinder cavalry and infantry.
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