About
The character "貂", representing the marten or sable, is structured as a phono-semantic compound combining the semantic radical "豸", which denotes beast-like animals, with the phonetic component "召" to guide pronunciation. Its etymology arises from this compositional logic, and the character's meaning has consistently referred to this specific animal, with no major semantic shifts observed throughout its historical usage. The graphical form, comprising these two components, has been employed uniformly in written contexts.
Etymology Hide
