About
The character 栉, with traditional form 櫛, primarily functions as a noun for a comb or a verb meaning to comb hair. It is a phono-semantic compound: the left radical 木 (wood) indicates the historical material of combs, while the right component 节 (simplified from 節) provides the phonetic element, originally relating to bamboo nodes. Over time, its meaning extended to describe things closely packed or arranged in rows, as in the idiom 栉比, depicting tightly aligned buildings. The simplified form retains the original phonetic and structural logic, with 节 replacing the more complex 節.
Etymology Hide
