About
The character 狳 is a phono-semantic compound, with the animal radical 犭 on the left providing the semantic category of beast, and the component 余 on the right indicating its pronunciation. This character is a bound morpheme, used exclusively in the bisyllabic noun 犰狳, the Chinese term for armadillo. Its formation exemplifies a traditional method for naming foreign fauna: combining a classifying radical with a phonetic element to create a new term for species not native to historical China.