Origin

This character combines water (shown on the left by the three-dot water radical) with a sound hint on the right that tells you roughly how to pronounce it. The connection to lacquer comes from the fact that lacquer is a liquid resin traditionally used as a protective coating, so pairing the water radical with a sound component made sense to speakers who wanted to write down the word for this substance. Over time, the character also picked up the meaning "seven" in certain contexts, though this is less directly tied to the character's shape.

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