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蛱 (traditional 蛺) is a phono-semantic compound used to name a particular insect. The radical 虫 indicates the semantic category of insects, worms, or reptiles, while the phonetic component 夹 (traditional 夾) supplies the pronunciation jiá and possibly alludes to the folding or pinching motion of wings. It is almost entirely bound to the compound 蛱蝶 (jiádié), the taxonomic term for brush-footed butterflies of the Nymphalidae family, and was created for this biological classification, functioning almost exclusively within that binomial compound throughout its lexical history.
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