About
The character 耩 is a phono-semantic compound used as an agricultural verb meaning to plow, sow seeds with a drill, or cultivate soil. Its structure combines the plow radical 耒 on the left, indicating farming tools and labor, with the phonetic component 冓 (gòu) on the right, which shifted in pronunciation to yield the modern reading jiǎng. It specifically denotes the technique of using an animal-drawn seed drill to plant crops in rows, a key method in historical agriculture. Due to its precise manual focus, the character remains largely confined to rural dialects and traditional farming texts, without extending into metaphorical uses beyond agricultural contexts.