Origin

This character pairs the hand radical on the left, which signals "action done by hand," with the character 疑 on the right, which serves as a sound hint for how to pronounce it. The right component itself means "doubt" or "suspicion," but here it's primarily telling you roughly how to say the character rather than contributing its meaning. Together, the hand doing something "doubtful" or "uncertain" — mimicking or imitating something in a way that isn't quite genuine or exact — captures the sense of copying, imitating, or aiming at a target imprecisely. Over time, this evolved to mean "to mimic" or "to nominate" (aiming your choice at a person).

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