Origin

This character combines the radical for "woman" on the left with "疾" (meaning swift or intense) on the right. The pairing suggests a swift or intense emotional reaction, and when tied to the concept of woman, it came to express the jealousy or envy that was stereotypically associated with women in classical East Asian writing. The right component adds intensity to the emotional state, while the left component frames it as an emotion characteristic of the female domain. Over time, the character's meaning broadened beyond gender stereotypes to simply mean jealousy or envy in general.