耕

Literal: To plow or till the soil; specifically the labor of breaking the earth, typically involving a plow and draft animal.

Extended/Synecdoche: Manual labor, the agrarian lifestyle, or the mundane world of survival (e.g., in the dichotomy //gēng-dú// 耕讀, "plowing and reading," contrasting physical toil with intellectual pursuit).

Primarily functions as a transitive verb ("to plow [something]"). It may also appear in compound structures acting as a category marker for tools or fields associated with plowing.

To avoid over-generalizing as "farming" (more properly 農 //nóng//), distinguish 耕 from other specific stages of the agricultural cycle:

// 墾 (//kěn*): Clearing wild land or reclaiming wasteland.

// 種 (//zhòng*): Sowing seeds.

// 耘 (//yún*): Weeding or tilling between rows after planting.

Semantic variants include U+754A and U+7C21; these are lexically identical to 耕.

The presence of the 耒 (plow/hoe) radical is the marker of tool-based soil intervention. In rapid cursive scripts, this radical may be confused with other similar "tool" or "hand" components.