About
Originally meaning a tiny fish or fry, 鲲 is now best known as the enormous mythological fish from classical philosophy. It combines the semantic radical 鱼 (fish) with the phonetic 昆 on the right; the traditional form, 鯤, uses the radical 魚. The character's significance shifted dramatically in the Zhuangzi, where the name of a fish fry is given to a mythical leviathan, forever linking 鲲 to transformation, limitless scale, and boundless ambition.
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