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鲕, the simplified form of the traditional character 鮞, is a phono-semantic compound coined to refer to fish roe, caviar, or newly hatched fry. Its structure pairs the semantic radical 鱼 (traditional 魚) 'fish' on the left, signaling the category of aquatic life, with the phonetic 而 on the right, which supplies the sound "ér". In standard usage, the character denotes fish eggs or very young fish. It also appears in the geological name 鲕状岩 (oolite), a sedimentary rock made of small spherical grains that look like dense masses of roe , a metaphorical extension grounded purely in visual resemblance.
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