琶

pá
#3,605 most
frequent character
see 琵琶, pipa lute

Character breakdown

Source: Make Me a Hanzi.

琶 has 玨, once a picture of an instrument’s strings but now empty, and 巴 bā as a sound part with the same rhyme. It first meant a stringed instrument like a lute with frets. That grew to the pípa.

Drawn as: instrument strings

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Homophones

爬pá
climb, creep, scramble

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