第

Translingual

Etymology

Phono-semantic compound (形聲): semantic ⺮ (“bamboo”) + phonetic 弟

竹 here refers to the bamboo strips used for writing (e.g. accounting, classification) in ancient times. See also 等.

Han character

第 (radical 118 竹+5, 11 strokes, cangjie input 竹弓中竹 (HNLH), four-corner 8822₇)

1. sequence, number
2. grade, degree
3. ordinal operator (第 followed by a numeric expression yields an ordinal number)

References

• KangXi: page 881, character 4
• Dai Kanwa Jiten: character 25943
• Dae Jaweon: page 1308, character 20
• Hanyu Da Zidian: volume 5, page 2959, character 9
• Unihan data for U+7B2C

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Cantonese

Hanzi

第 (Yale dai6)

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Japanese

Kanji

第 (grade 3 “Kyōiku” kanji)

Readings

• On: だい (dai)
• Kun: ついで (tsuide), やしき (yashiki), ただ (tada)

Prefix

第 (hiragana だい, romaji dai-)

1. ordinal marker, often with affix 号. Is like the in English, but only used before numbers.

   第二(号)

   だいに(ごう)

   dai-ni (gō)

   The 2(nd)

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Korean

Hanja

第 (hangeul 제, revised je, McCune-Reischauer che, Yale cey)

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Mandarin

Pronunciation

• audio

  (file)

Prefix

第 (pinyin dì (di4), Wade-Giles ti⁴)

1. Ordinal number marker, used before a number to make the number ordinal

   第一 — First

   第二 — Second

   第十 — Tenth

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Vietnamese

Han character

第 (đệ)