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The character 鴂 (jué) is a phono-semantic compound that names specific birds, such as the shrike or tailor-bird. It is constructed from the semantic component 鳥 (bird) and the phonetic component 夬 (guài/jué). In classical literature, it appears almost exclusively in the compound 鶗鴂 (tíjué), which serves as an alternative poetic name for the cuckoo. This compound appears frequently in classical poetry, where the cuckoo's cry is associated with the changing of seasons, and through this association the character shifts from a merely biological designation to a literary motif of time and sorrow.
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