独
dú · HSK 7
by oneself
🐕 A dog (犭) with bugs (蜀) — even mans best friend sometimes needs to be alone
Left radical 犭 means dog/animal. Right component 蜀 (ancient name for Sichuan) acts as phonetic. A lone dog wandering off by itself captures the core sense: alone, solitary, only.
独 — dog radical 犭 + 蜀 (phonetic)
A semantic-phonetic compound: 犭 (dog) gives the meaning, since dogs were thought to fight when kept together and so were often kept singly, while 蜀 supplies the sound. The original sense was 'solitary dog,' which broadened to 'alone, single, only.'