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鈆 is a historical variant of 鉛, the character for lead. It is formed as a phono-semantic compound: the semantic component 金 (釒), meaning 'metal', signals that the character refers to a metal, while the phonetic component 公 (gōng) indicates the pronunciation, even though it normally means 'public' or 'fair'. The standard character 鉛 uses a different phonetic element, and the existence of this variant shows that before the written forms for metals were standardized, a range of phonetic borrowings were used to represent the same word. In this variant, the phonetic 公 lent the character a distinct sound, reflecting the fluidity of early Chinese metallurgical terminology.
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