叼
diāo · HSK 7
to hold with one's mouth (as a smoker with a cigarette or a dog with a bone)
🐕🦴 口 mouth + 刁 tricky — a mouth doing a cunning grip
The 口 radical flags this as mouth-related. The right half 刁 (diāo) supplies the sound and means cunning or sly — clamping a bone or cigarette between your teeth is the mouths sly little trick.
叼 — mouth 口 + ladle 勺
叼 is a phono-semantic compound. The mouth radical 口 gives the meaning, since the character describes holding something between the lips or teeth, while 勺 (sháo) supplies the sound, shifted to diāo. The modern sense 'to hold in the mouth' (as a bird carries prey or a person grips a cigarette) reflects this oral imagery.