In Mandarin Chinese, 蛇 (Pinyin: shé 🔊) means “snake”. The Snake is one of the twelve-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac and is associated with the earthly branch 巳.
According to Wiktionary, 蛇 is a phono-semantic compound of “semantic” 虫 (“the character originally represented a type of venomous snake ... 虫 eventually came to represent worms and insects as well”) and “phonetic” 它 (now pronounced tā, so you’d never guess). 它 also originally meant “snake”, so 蛇 is like “snake snake”.
More photos related to snakes, zodiac and sea glass @ Shutterstock.
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