贝, a pictographic character of a seashell used as money, serves as a semantic component to form characters. Characters formed by the semantic component 贝 express things related to money, trade or decoration such as 贠, 贷, 贩, 费, 贺, 赆, 贶, 贻, 赁, 赇, 贫, 貥, 贲, 贸, etc. 贝 also serves as a phonetic component to form characters. Continue reading “贝 seashell”