甲
Tap the pinyin to hear it
first of the ten Heavenly Stems 十天干[shi2 tian1 gan1]; (used for an unspecified person or thing); first (in a list, as a party to a contract etc); letter "A" or roman "I" in list "A, B, C", or "I, II, III" etc; armor plating; shell or carapace; (of the fingers or toes) nail; bladed leather or metal armor (old); ranking system used in the Imperial examinations (old); civil administration unit in the baojia 保甲[bao3 jia3] system (old); ancient Chinese compass point: 75°
- HSK 3.0
- Level 5
- Old HSK
- Level 5
- Strokes
- 5
- Radical
- 田 itself
- Structure
- Overlaid 叠加
- Traditional
- 甲
- Common rank
- #426
- Unicode
- U+7532
Sound it out + + =
Formation & memory
Break the character into parts you already know.
How 甲 is formed
How to remember it
first · Heisig RSH #916
田 rice field — as a component also called: first, radish
Keyword method from Heisig's Remembering Simplified Hanzi.
Words with 甲
The most common words first — learning a character in context makes it stick.
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 一甲子 | sixty years | |
| 花甲之年 | (idiom) 60 years old | |
| 红马甲 | red waistcoat; (stock market) floor trader; floor broker | |
| 路人甲 | ordinary person A; generic person; some random person | |
| 马甲线 | (neologism, attested by 2013) (coll.) vertical groove visible on either side of the belly … | |
| 前三甲 | top three | |
| 甲子 | first year of the sixty-year cycle (where each year is numbered with one of the 10 heavenl… | |
| 一甲 | 1st rank or top three candidates who passed the imperial examination (i.e. 狀元|状元[zhuang4 y… | |
| 甲骨文字 | oracle script; oracle bone character (an early form of Chinese script) | |
| 马甲 | corset; sockpuppet (Internet slang); vest (dialect) | |
| 机甲 | mecha (human-operated robots in Japanese manga) | |
| 花甲 | 60 years (of age); see 花蛤[hua1 ge2] | |
| 西甲 | La Liga, the top division of the Spanish football league system | |
| 三甲 | 3rd rank of candidates who passed the imperial examination; (hospital ranking) A-grade ter… | |
| 甲骨文 | oracle script; oracle bone inscriptions (an early form of Chinese script) | |
| 飞行甲板 | flight deck | |
| 铁甲车 | armored car | |
| 满城尽带黄金甲 | Curse of the Golden Flower (2007), period drama movie by Zhang Yimou | |
| 后甲板 | afterdeck | |
| 甲方 | party A (in a contract) (cf. 乙方[yi3 fang1], party B) |
Sound family
These characters use 甲 as their sound component — compare how they read.
| Character | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 甲 sound part | armor, shell; fingernails; 1st heavenly stem | |
| 鸭 | duck; Anas species (various) | |
| 押 | to arrest, to detain; to deposit, to pledge; mortgage | |
| 闸 | sluice, floodgate, canal lock | |
| 钾 | potassium | |
| 匣 | case, coffer, small box | |
| 岬 | cape; promontory, headland | |
| 狎 | to be familiar with; to disrespect | |
| 呷 | to swallow, to suck, to drink | |
| 胛 | shoulder; shoulder blade | |
| 柙 | a cage or pen for wild animals |