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蠃 (luǒ) is an ideograph combining the insect radical 虫 with 吂 ("dead") and ⺼ ("flesh"), originally depicting a wasp building its nest in dead flesh. It names the potter wasp, a solitary species that sculpts mud nests and provisions them with paralyzed caterpillars. In modern Chinese the character is rare, appearing chiefly in the compound 蜾蠃 (guǒluǒ). Historically, it was sometimes used interchangeably with 裸 (luǒ) to mean "naked" or "bare", but its primary meaning remains the predatory wasp.
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