About
The character 揠 is a phono-semantic compound, combining the hand radical 扌, which denotes a manual action, with the phonetic component 匽. Its core meaning is to pull up or uproot something by hand. This action is famously illustrated in the classical idiom about a farmer who tugs his crop shoots upward to speed their growth, thereby ruining them. The story thus associates the character with the idea of spoiling something through unnatural haste rather than allowing natural development.
Etymology Hide
