Definitions

yǎo a kind of grass

Etymology phono-semantic

grass

Semantic: Phonetic:

About

is a very rare character, recorded in classical dictionaries as a specific type of grass or vegetation. It is a phono-semantic compound: the grass radical on top marks its botanical sense, while the lower component ('lamb') provides the pronunciation but not the plant's meaning. Such characters were often created by ancient scholars and herbalists to categorize plants for agricultural or medicinal use. The plant it named was likely regional and highly specialized, so the character never entered common usage and remains an obscure artifact of historical linguistic classification.