About
The character 妪 is a phono-semantic compound. Its semantic radical 女 (nǚ), meaning woman, is on the left, while the phonetic component 区 (qū), meaning area, is on the right. The traditional form is 嫗, which pairs the same radical with the unsimplified phonetic element 區. The character fundamentally means an old woman or hag. It is primarily found in classical Chinese texts and historical narratives, or within formal compounds like 老妪 (lǎoyù, "elderly lady"), and is seldom used independently in modern speech.
Etymology Hide
