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The character 辒, with the traditional form 轀, is a phono-semantic compound: the radical 车 ('cart, vehicle') signals the semantic category, and the right-side component 昷 gives the pronunciation. In early texts, it referred to an enclosed carriage or a sleeping car; later, it came to mean almost exclusively a hearse used for conveying a coffin. The marriage of a vehicle radical and a phonetic element mirrors its historical function, and its core identity as a type of wheeled conveyance has remained essentially stable throughout its lexical history.
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