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胙 (zuò) originally denoted the sacrificial meat offered to deities or ancestors during formal rituals, then distributed to participants as a tangible manifestation of divine blessing. The character is a phono-semantic compound: the left component 月, a variant of the meat radical 肉, signals the flesh connection, while the right component 乍 (zhà) gives the sound. Its meaning later broadened from the literal offering to include divine blessing, imperial rewards, and the bestowal of favors and titles, and it frequently appears in historical accounts of state ceremonies and ancestral worship.
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