Definitions
short-tailed bird
Etymology
Pictograph of a bird.
About
The character "隹" originated as a pictograph for a short-tailed bird, establishing its etymological basis in avian representation. Its structure in contemporary script is a standardized radical, abstracted from the pictorial form but remaining indivisible in composition. The independent lexical meaning of "bird" has largely receded, with "隹" now functioning predominantly as a semantic component in compound characters, where it imparts bird-related connotations, as seen in constructs like "雀" (sparrow) or "雉" (pheasant), reflecting its shifted role from a free morpheme to a bound orthographic element.
Etymology Hide
