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鼯 is a phono-semantic compound that names the flying squirrel, a nocturnal gliding rodent of the Sciuridae family. Its left side is the radical 鼠, meaning 'rat' or 'rodent', which groups the animal with small mammals such as mice and rats, while the right side is the phonetic 吾, giving the character its pronunciation wú. Attested consistently from ancient writings to modern zoological nomenclature, it appears almost exclusively in the compound 鼯鼠 and carries no abstract, metaphorical, or verbal meanings, functioning purely as the biological label for this gliding mammal.
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