Occasionally a bisyllabic word is written with two characters that contain the same radical, as in 蝴蝶 húdié "butterfly", where both characters have the insect radical 虫. A notable example is pipa (a Chinese lute, also a fruit, the loquat, of similar shape) – originally written as 批把 with the hand radical, referring to the down and up strokes when playing this instrument, which was then changed to 枇杷 (tree radical), which is still used for the fruit, while the character was changed to 琵琶 when referring to the instrument. In other cases a compound word may coincidentally share a radical without this being meaningful.

What is occasionally written with two characters that contain the same radical?