About
腱 is a phono-semantic compound comprising the flesh radical ⺼ (a variant of 肉, 'flesh' or 'meat') and the phonetic 建. The radical marks the character as referring to a body part, while 建 supplies the sound. It denotes a tendon, the tough, fibrous connective tissue attaching muscle to bone, and exemplifies the systematic construction of anatomical vocabulary in Chinese.
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