About
The character 哚 combines the semantic mouth radical 口 on the left with the phonetic component 朵 on the right. Like other characters created for modern scientific translation, it was specifically formed to transcribe phonetic sounds from foreign chemical names, rather than arising from ancient usage. The mouth radical 口 signals that the character is used for phonetic transliteration from a foreign language. In this case, 哚 is employed exclusively to represent the organic compound indole in biochemical and pharmaceutical terminology.