About
The character 驸 (fù) is the simplified form of 駙. Its original meaning is an extra horse yoked alongside the main team pulling a carriage or chariot. Structurally, it is a phono-semantic compound: the semantic radical 马 (simplified from 馬, 'horse') places it in the domain of horses and transport, while the phonetic 付 (fù) supplies the pronunciation. Over the centuries, the character came to be used almost exclusively in the title 驸马 (fùmǎ). This title initially referred to the official responsible for the emperor's spare carriage horses, but later it became the specific term for an emperor's son-in-law, a sense that completely eclipsed the original literal meaning of an auxiliary horse.
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