Question/Feedback about 甲

Hey ya’ll, I’ll keep it short and sweet:

I was just doing my new kanji lessons and I noticed that the kanji 甲 has the meaning of “Turtle Shell” with the synonym of “A.”

I double checked it on my own, and while I found a multiplicity of possible meanings for the 甲, the indefinite article “a” was not among them. So yeah, @Leebo /(idk, who else would know, @ZengoTim?) is invited to prove me wrong, otherwise I think I found a typo, and would like as a reward 1-3 moderately entertaining gifs.

Thank you for your time, and now, I disappear!

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It means A in the sense of “A or B” former or latter.

乙 is the corresponding B/latter character.

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It is used in contracts in the sense of party A, basically as Leebo said. My dict says it’s also grade “A” (成績の優).

Don’t look at me, I’m struggling these days (but my GOD i do still love the language!).

There’s a whole list of A, B, C, D 甲乙丙丁 etc actually. I believe there might be some medical terms for different diseases but an example escapes me.

I sorta got introduced by it from the game kantai collection in which it there are difficulties 甲乙丙 for hard, medium, easy or A, B, C. Also in WWII they used it for naming technologies as they developed more advanced versions like the kouhyouteki. On a side note the naming of ship classes uses the iroha naming system if you’re also interested.

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