About
骈 originally referred to a pair of horses yoked side by side to pull a carriage. The traditional character 駢 is a phono-semantic compound: the left radical 馬 gives the meaning 'horse', while the right component 幷 (together, side by side) indicates the sound and reinforces the sense of pairing. Its simplified form, 骈, uses the simplified horse radical 马 and the phonetic 并. From this image of a team of horses working in tandem, 骈 acquired the extended meaning of a highly stylized parallel prose that dominated classical Chinese literature, marked by balanced, paired sentences and strict rhythmic patterns.
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