About
The character "翮" is structured with the semantic component "羽", meaning feather, and the component "鬲", which primarily functions as a phonetic indicator. Its etymology points to an original meaning referring specifically to the rigid quill or shaft of a feather. Over time, the term's application broadened to denote the large flight feathers themselves, and by extension, it came to represent wings or the act of flying in literary usage. This semantic expansion also led to occasional metaphorical applications, such as referring to a writing brush made from feathers, illustrating a shift from a concrete anatomical part to more abstract functional associations.
Etymology Hide
