About
As a phono-semantic compound, 镏 (traditional: 鎦) combines the semantic radical 钅 (from 金, meaning metal) on the left with the phonetic component 留 (liú, "to remain") on the right. The character has two specialized meanings: in metallurgy, it refers to plating or gilding a thin gold layer onto another metal; in modern chemistry, it represents the element lutetium. It is confined to these technical fields and has no everyday colloquial use.
Etymology Hide
