Definitions
old variant of 芒[máng]; arista (of grain)
Etymology
About
笀 consists of the bamboo radical 竹 (indicating bamboo or bamboo objects) and the phonetic component 亡, which supplies the pronunciation. The character originally referred to a type of bamboo grass, the joints of a bamboo stalk, or the sharp, needle-like tips of certain bamboo plants. Its structure illustrates a common pattern in traditional Chinese lexicons: the radical marks the botanical category while the phonetic pinpoints the specific plant or feature. Because of this highly specialized meaning, 笀 appears almost exclusively in historical agricultural texts, local plant descriptions, and specialized biological dictionaries, and it lacks any general use in modern language.
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