About
The character 蚧 is structurally composed of the insect radical 虫 paired with the phonetic component 介, a formation that aligns with its early meaning pertaining to scale insects or cochineals. Over time, its primary application shifted from denoting these small pests to being used almost exclusively within the compound 蛤蚧, a term for a specific gecko species utilized in traditional medicine, thereby extending its semantic field while retaining the original insect-related radical.