About
The character 轫, whose traditional form is 軔, combines the semantic radical 车 meaning vehicle with the component 刃 serving primarily as a phonetic indicator. It originally denoted a wooden brake or chock placed against a wheel to halt its movement. This concrete meaning later evolved to include abstract applications, such as in the compound 发轫 where it metaphorically represents the beginning of an action, derived from the act of releasing the wheel block to commence travel.
Etymology Hide
