Origin

This character combines the mouth radical on the left, which indicates the meaning involves the mouth and speech, with the character for earth on the right, which serves as a sound hint for pronunciation. The mouth radical is used because all the meanings involve something coming out of the mouth—whether it's physically spitting or vomiting, or verbally confessing and telling. The earth component doesn't contribute to the meaning; it's simply there to suggest how the character should be pronounced.

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