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鱿 (yóu), meaning "squid", is a phono-semantic compound: the left side 鱼 (yú) "fish" acts as the semantic radical, categorizing it as a marine creature, while the right side 尤 (yóu) supplies the pronunciation. The traditional form is 魷, with the fish radical written in its unsimplified state as 魚. This pairing of a general taxonomic classifier with a phonetic follows the typical pattern for Chinese aquatic animal names, and the character has consistently denoted the squid.
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