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Originally an obscure term for human flesh or a bodily state, 朊 (ruǎn) has been specifically repurposed in modern scientific Chinese to denote a prion, an infectious protein particle. Structurally, it is a phono-semantic compound: the flesh radical 月 (derived from 肉, "meat") on the left indicates an organic substance, while 元 (yuán) on the right provides the sound. This reuse of a dormant character allowed scientists to translate the microbiological term into Chinese, showing how specialized vocabulary systematically repurposes obsolete graphs to name newly discovered biological entities.
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