About
氰 is a modern phono-semantic compound created for the Chinese chemical nomenclature. The enclosing semantic radical 气 'gas' indicates that the substance is a gas at room temperature, and the phonetic component 青 (qíng) gives the pronunciation. The character denotes cyanogen and related cyanide compounds. The choice of 青, meaning 'blue/green', deliberately approximates the sound of the international prefix cyan- (from Greek for dark blue), linking the character to its global etymology. It is used exclusively as a technical term in chemistry, with no classical or everyday applications.
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