About
The character 肰 is a semantic compound combining the meat radical 肉 (⺼) on the left and the dog radical 犬 on the right. It originally and literally meant 'dog meat', using the two components to specify the animal and the flesh. This character later served as the etymological root for 然, which added the fire radical (灬) to depict roasting that meat over a fire. Over time, 然 evolved into an abstract grammatical particle, while 肰 became an obscure character found only in classical dictionaries and etymological works.
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