About
The character 苣 is a phono-semantic compound: the upper radical 艹 (cǎo, 'grass') indicates a plant, while the lower component 巨 (jù) provides the sound. It is primarily used in names of leafy plants and vegetables, most notably in the compound for lettuce, as well as chicory and endive. In modern Chinese it is almost exclusively a bound morpheme, combining with other characters to form botanical terms, a practice typical of traditional taxonomy where the grass radical pairs with phonetic components to name specific plants.
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