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馇 (chā) is the simplified counterpart of traditional 餷. It is a phono-semantic compound: the left side is the simplified food radical 饣 (derived from 食), which marks the meaning as related to cooking or food, and the right side is 查 (chá), which supplies the sound. In dialect, it functions as a verb meaning to boil food until it breaks down into a soft, mushy texture. As a noun, it names the resulting thick, porridge-like dish, a staple in some regional Chinese cuisines.
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