About
The character 笤 is a phono-semantic compound, with the bamboo radical 竹 on top and the phonetic 召 on the bottom. The bamboo radical signals that it originally referred to a bamboo object: a broom or besom. In modern usage, it appears almost exclusively in the compound 笤帚, a short-handled broom typically bound together from bamboo splints or straw. The phonetic 召 provides a clue to the pronunciation, though the sound has diverged somewhat over time.
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