About
The character "饧", whose traditional form is "餳", is structurally composed of the semantic component "食" (food) on the left, indicating its category, and the phonetic component "易" on the right, which originally provided a clue to its sound. Its earliest core meaning referred specifically to malt sugar or a syrup made from grain. Over time, the application of this term broadened from denoting the raw sweetener to encompassing various soft, pliable, or melting confections, such as a certain type of soft candy. In its modern simplified form, the right-hand component was altered from "易" to "𠃓", which is the right side of the character "汤" (tāng), a change that created a new phonetic association while maintaining the food-related radical.
Etymology Hide
