Vietnamese Nôm Character for Cuốc

It names the white-breasted waterhen in Vietnamese Nôm. Its Vietnamese reading is cuốc. Chữ Nôm is an older writing system that adapted Chinese characters to write Vietnamese; here, 鳥 signals “bird” and 國 cues the sound. The word echoes the bird’s call.

A Nôm dictionary lists 𫛐 as another spelling of cuốc and cites its entry in Hồng Đức quốc âm thi tập (a Vietnamese verse collection) for “cuốc cuốc cuốc,” and Lý hạng ca dao (a folk-song collection) for trông gà hóa cuốc (“mistaking a chicken for a waterhen”). A chart of the Shuowen Jiezi—an early Chinese dictionary—pairs 𪅦 with 雝 as a small-seal form, an old Chinese script style.