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The character "鹩" derives from its traditional form "鷯", a phono-semantic compound formed by the bird radical "鳥" and the phonetic component "寮" to signal its pronunciation, which is associated with the term for the wren. This character's meaning has consistently pointed to that small bird, and its simplified version "鹩" follows an identical structural logic by pairing the same phonetic with the simplified bird radical "鸟". The character's application has been confined to ornithological references, as seen in compounds like "鹪鹩".
Etymology Hide
