About
The character "霾" is structured with the semantic radical "雨" positioned above the phonetic component "貍", which in contemporary usage sometimes appears as "狸". Etymologically, this combination originally indicated a weather phenomenon where dust or sand was stirred by the wind to obscure the sky. Over time, the meaning of the character shifted from describing such natural dust storms to specifically denoting the thick haze or smog composed of fine particulate matter that characterizes air pollution in modern environments.
Etymology Hide
