About
饨 is a phonosemantic compound. The left side is 饣, a simplified form of the food radical 食, which signals that the character belongs to the domain of eating and food. The right side is 屯, which gives the character its pronunciation. The traditional form, 飩, used the full radical 食. When simplified, only the radical was reduced, leaving 屯 unchanged so that the sound stays the same. 饨 is not used independently; it occurs almost exclusively as the second syllable in the word 馄饨 (wonton), a kind of stuffed dumpling, and has no meaning beyond that culinary term.
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