About
骟 is a phono-semantic compound that originally meant to geld a horse and later broadened to the castration of other male livestock like mules and sheep, rendering them more docile for work. The character consists of the simplified horse radical 马 on the left, delimiting the semantic field to equines and animal husbandry, and the phonetic 扇 (shàn) on the right, which supplies the pronunciation. It is the simplified form of 騸, where the traditional horse radical 馬 pairs with the same phonetic. Today it functions as a specialized verb in veterinary and agricultural contexts.
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