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The character 鹠, simplified from 鶹, denotes an owl and commonly appears in the binome 鸺鹠. It is a phono-semantic compound: the left component 鸟 (the simplified bird radical) provides the semantic category of birds, while the right component 留 supplies the pronunciation "liú". This phonetic element may also allude to the owl's habit of remaining in one location. In the simplification process, the traditional radical 鳥 was replaced by 鸟, while the phonetic component 留 remained unchanged.
Etymology Hide
