Definitions
blessings
Etymology
About
The character 礽 is a phono-semantic compound: the left component 礻, a variant of 示, conveys the semantic field of spirits, altars, and ancestral veneration, while the right side 乃 indicates pronunciation. In classical usage, it denoted happiness or spiritual blessings from ancestors, and later acquired the precise kinship sense "descendant of the eighth generation", illustrating how altar-related characters often extended to generational terms. The phonetic 乃 originally depicted a breath or vapor, but this imagery does not affect the character's meaning.
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