Definitions
name of a tribe; socks; stockings
Etymology
About
靺 (mò) is best known from historical and ethnographic records as the first character in the name of the Mohe (靺鞨), an ancient Tungusic people of Manchuria. Structurally, it is a phono-semantic compound combining the semantic radical 革 (gé) 'leather' and the phonetic 末 (mò). The leather radical points to the character's original meaning, a specific type of ancient footwear, described as a leather sock or wrapping for the feet. Over time, while this literal sense persisted in specialized texts, the character was overwhelmingly used to phonetically represent the tribal name. Such borrowing of a material-based character to transcribe a foreign name is a common historical practice in Chinese.
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