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钴 (gǔ), the simplified form of 鈷, is a phono-semantic compound. The radical 钅 (from 金, 'metal') indicates that the character belongs to the category of metals or chemical elements, while 古 (gǔ) gives its pronunciation. The traditional character 鈷 originally appeared in ancient texts denoting a type of flat iron or an unspecified metal implement, a meaning that is now completely obsolete. In modern Chinese, 钴 was repurposed as a phonetic rendering for the chemical element cobalt, a hard, silvery-gray metal, and today it is used exclusively in this scientific sense, illustrating how old characters were sometimes adopted for standardized chemical nomenclature.
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