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蝈 is a phono-semantic compound: the radical 虫 (chóng, 'insect, worm') on the left gives the semantic category, and 国 (guó, 'country, nation') on the right indicates the sound. Its traditional form 蟈 retains the unsimplified phonetic 國. The character names a loudly chirping orthopteran, a grasshopper or katydid, and is most familiar in the reduplicated word 蝈蝈 (guōguō), the Chinese bush cricket, which has long been caught, bred, and kept in tiny bamboo or gourd cages as a singing pet.
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