乙

zhé
#1,869 most
frequent character
turning stroke (in Chinese characters), aka 折[zhe2]

Character breakdown

Source: Make Me a Hanzi.

乙 is a picture of a small stream of water. That was its first meaning. The second Heavenly Branch meaning was borrowed for its sound, and from that came second as an ordinal.

Drawn as: small water stream

乙 as a component in other characters

meaning1 character
sound6 characters
picture1 character

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