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阖 (hé) is the modern simplified form of the traditional character 闔. It is a phono-semantic compound: the outer semantic component 门 (simplified from 門) means 'door,' pointing to the original meaning of shutting or closing a door, while the inner component 盍 (hé) provides the sound. From the concrete act of closing a door, the sense naturally extended to the enclosing of the entire household, and so 阖 also came to be used as an adjective meaning 'entire' or 'whole.' In contemporary formal and written language, it is frequently employed to refer to the whole family, most notably in the traditional greeting 阖家欢乐 (héjiā huānlè, "happiness to the whole family").
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