About
The character "鳀", whose traditional form is "鯷", is constructed as a phono-semantic compound with the fish radical "鱼" in its simplified form or "魚" in traditional providing the semantic field, while the component "是" functions as a phonetic indicator for its modern pronunciation "tí". This character has consistently referred to the anchovy, a small fish, since its early documented usage in Chinese texts, with its etymological design following the common pattern of combining a meaning-bearing radical with a sound-giving element to specify a particular entity within the natural world.