CJK Unified Ideograph-943E

It means blade-stropping; older records also name a plough part.

The earliest dated evidence located here is the 997 Longkan Shoujian, where the related form 鐴 is glossed as “土犁耳”: an iron plate on a plough that turns and breaks soil. That farming component is the oldest practical purpose supported in this record.

The knife sense is also documented in lexicographic material: rub a blade repeatedly on cloth, leather, or stone until it sharpens, most clearly written as 鐾刀. The evidence supports two practical senses and a variant relationship, not a single inventor or tidy replacement.

Is 鐾 the same as 鐴?

Yes: 鐾 is recorded as a variant of 鐴.

That is a documentary relationship, not a guess from similar shapes. It links the farming sense to 鐴 while modern entries for 鐾 foreground knife sharpening. Alone, 鐾 is not a reaction or shorthand; ask for the surrounding word.

The CUHK dialect database records the character at Nanjing, Xi'an, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Wenzhou, and Fengkai-Nanfeng, with forms such as 鐾刀 and 鐾刀布. Reading follows context: one modern dictionary gives bèi for the verb, while the variant entry gives bì.