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脞 is a phono-semantic compound: the flesh radical 月 (a contracted form of 肉 'meat') on the left gives the semantic category, and 坐 on the right indicates the pronunciation. Its original meaning was finely chopped meat. From the notion of small, broken pieces, the meaning broadened metaphorically to describe anything trifling, petty, or fragmentary. This extended sense typically appears in compounds referring to administrative details that are overly complex, trivial, and unnecessarily burdensome, illustrating how a concrete physical description evolved into an abstract qualitative judgment.
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