About
The character 齄 is a phono-semantic compound used in traditional Chinese medicine to describe a swollen, red, or bulbous nose, a condition commonly known as rosacea. Its structure combines the nose radical 鼻 on the left, which anchors its meaning to this facial feature and related skin conditions, with the component 查 on the right, which provides the historical pronunciation. As a specialized medical term, 齄 appears almost exclusively in dermatological texts and traditional diagnostic literature, not in everyday Chinese.