About
菠 is a phono-semantic compound: the radical 艹 (grass, plants) placed on top contributes the meaning, while 波 (bō, 'wave') below supplies the sound. It was created to transcribe a foreign botanical term and is used almost exclusively in 菠菜 (spinach). The word spinach entered Chinese from Persian, and the character was formed by attaching the plant radical to a phonetic rendering of the foreign word, thus integrating the loan into the writing system and marking it as a leafy vegetable of external origin.
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