蠢蛋 Origin — Chinese Character Wiki

chǔndàn

fool

chǔn wriggle

Phonosemantic compound. 春 represents the sound and 䖵 represents the meaning.

春 Sound component

chūn spring

䖵 Meaning component

kūn insects

Regular Modern

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	Middle Chinese	Old Chinese
Zhengzhang		tʰjunʔ
Unicode	chuǐn

《說文》：“蠢，蟲動也。从，春聲。古文蠢从。《周書》曰：‘我有于西。’”

Phonosemantic compound. 虫 represents the meaning and 延 represents the sound.

yán delay

Change in sound

蛋 and 延 don't sound similar in modern Mandarin due to historical phonetic changes. They were more similar in Old Chinese.
蛋 l'aːns
延 *la[n]

虫 Meaning component

chóng bug, insect

	Old Chinese
Zhengzhang	l'aːns