About
馏 (traditional 餾) is a phono-semantic compound, where the food radical 饣 (食) points to cooking and eating, and 留 gives the sound. Originally, it meant steaming already-cooked food to reheat it. The character later extended to distillation, especially of wine, appearing in terms like distilled water. The pronunciation comes from 留, with the tone differing between the two meanings.
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