About
鬻 (yù) combines 粥 (rice porridge, with the rice element 米) above a steaming cooking vessel (鬲). Together they depict rice being boiled into porridge. Originally, the character meant "porridge", a sense now written as 粥 (zhōu). Through phonetic loan, it was borrowed for the homophonous verb "to sell", which completely replaced the culinary meaning in standard usage and is now its sole meaning, found chiefly in formal or literary contexts.
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