About
The character 伥 refers to a ghost from Chinese folklore, the spirit of a person devoured by a tiger, now compelled to help the tiger lure new victims. It is formed with the semantic radical 亻 (person) on the left, indicating a human or humanoid entity, and the phonetic component 长 on the right, which guides pronunciation. The traditional variant 倀 retains the same radical but uses the unsimplified form 長. Due to its chilling origin, the character’s meaning broadened into a metaphor used in common idioms to condemn those who betray and assist tyrants or evil forces in harming the innocent.
Etymology Hide
