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The character 鲻 is a phono-semantic compound: it combines the semantic radical 鱼 (fish) with the phonetic 甾, which gives its sound. In traditional script, it is written 鯔, with the radical in its full form 魚 while the phonetic remains the same. It was coined to refer to the mullet, a family of ray-finned fish living in coastal temperate and tropical waters worldwide. This structure exemplifies a common taxonomic practice in Chinese, using the radical to mark the biological category and the phonetic to differentiate the species.
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