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The ancient form
Today

yòu · jau6

again; also; yet (originally: a right hand)

Where it comes from

又 began as a simple picture of a right hand — a wrist bending up into two or three spread fingers, one of several hand-shapes the earliest scribes drew alongside the fuller, five-fingered 手. Scribes soon borrowed its sound to write a completely different idea: "once more, also" — a word too abstract to draw. That borrowed sense is the one that stuck, so today the little hand mostly means "again", while its old meaning survives hidden inside other characters.

A piece of culture

The hand that turns up everywhere
又 is one of the hardest-working shapes in Chinese writing. It is folded into 友 (friend), which you already know as two hands reaching toward each other, and into 皮 (hide), where a hand strips a pelt from an animal. When China simplified its writing system in the 20th century, 又 was even reused to build a brand-new character, 双, "a pair" — literally two hands side by side, just like 友, but with a completely different meaning. And in both Mandarin and Cantonese, 又 shares its exact sound with 右, "right (side)", a character built from that same hand plus a mouth (口).

Use it in a real word

又是
yòu shì ·
"...again" / "yet again" — a common way to say something has happened once more; you already know 是
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