Origin

The character 偵 combines a person radical on the left (亻) with the component 貞 on the right, which serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation テイ. The left side indicates this character describes a type of person or human action, while the right component provides a rough phonetic guide. Over time, the character came to specifically denote someone who gathers information secretly—a spy—building on the general sense of "person" plus the sound pattern suggested by 貞.

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