Origin

This character combines water (the three dots on the left) with a sound hint on the right that suggests the pronunciation. The water radical tells you the character relates to liquids and their properties, which connects to the core meaning of murkiness or turbidity — when water becomes cloudy or impure. Over time, this visual and phonetic combination came to express the broader idea of anything that is unclear, impure, or morally wrong, not just cloudy water. The sound component helps speakers remember how to pronounce it while the water radical anchors the meaning to the physical concept of murky liquid.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).