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Core sense: the limit or the end. Lexical applications include:

1. Spatial/Physical: dead ends, remote locations, or boundary areas.

2. Material/Economic: poverty and destitution (the exhaustion of resources).

3. Intellectual/Analytical: thorough investigation; exhausting a subject or following reasoning to its ultimate conclusion.

4. Psychological/Existential: desperation; reaching the end of one's patience or options.

• Transitive Verb: To exhaust, deplete, or search out completely.
• Intransitive Verb / Stative: To reach a dead end, become stuck, or fall into poverty.
• Adjective: Destitute (lack of means); remote or extreme (spatial).

Tang-period reading: *ghiung. Variants include U+7AC6 and U+7A77; these are standard evolutionary variants with no shift in meaning.

Poverty should be viewed as a specific application of the core sense (the state of having reached the end of one's resources); translators should identify exactly what is being exhausted in context. Note the tension in valence: exhausting food, money, or paths implies depletion and entrapment (negative), while exhausting a mystery or logic implies thoroughness and mastery (positive/neutral).