About
The character 枘 denotes a tenon, a wooden projection fitted into a mortise to create a joint in traditional carpentry. Its structure is a phono-semantic compound: the semantic radical 木 (mù, wood) on the left classifies it as a wooden object, while the phonetic component 内 (nèi) on the right suggests both pronunciation and the concept of inward insertion. The term is often used metaphorically to describe incompatibility, like a square tenon forced into a round mortise.