What is the meaning of 子 in Chinese?

Read the Chinese Dictionary meaning of 子,part of speech of 子, synonyms of 子, antonyms of 子, words derived from 子, examples of 子 usage, alternate forms of 子, word forms of 子, history of 子, pronounciation of 子, abbreviation forms of 子 below:

Chinese Dictionary Word Meaning of 子

1.1 small, round object
2.1 Classifier for small objects.
3.1 Classifier for bananas.

Part of Speech - Chinese Dictionary word 子

子 is a Character. A letter, symbol, or sign used in writing or printing

History of 子

Characters in the same phonetic series (子) (Zhengzhang, 2003) Pictogram (象形) – an image of a baby, with a large head and spread arms. The legs are wrapped in a blanket. Compare with 了, where the arms are wrapped. The big seal script form is much more elaborate, showing a baby with hair on a head (囟) and arms on the two sides of the body, sitting on a stool (几). ;child :From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *tsa ~ za (“child, offspring, relatives; to come forth (as child at birth); to love; loving”). :Cognate with 字 (OC *zlɯs, “character; letter”), 慈 (OC *zɯ, “loving; kind”), 滋 (OC *ʔsɯ, “to grow, to breed, to propagate, to bring about, to increase”), 孳 (OC *ʔsɯ, *zɯs, “to breed, to propagate”). ;first earthly branch :In oracle bone and Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, 子 was the sixth earthly branch; the first earthly branch was denoted differently. One of the forms survived in Shuo Wen (𢀇) (Matsumaru, 2015). :Smith (2011) proposed this character is 甾. Observing that 甾 is closely linked with 緇 "dark, stained", 淄 "murky (water)", 菑 "field cleared by burning" (all pronounced *tsrə), Smith (2011) proposes that initially the first earthly branch 甾 (OC *ts[r]əʔ) denoted the new moon phase and meant "darkened, voided, the darkened stage". Additionally, Smith (2011) proposes that 子 (OC tsəʔ), which originated from a Sino-Tibetan root meaning "to come forth", denoted the moon's "coming forth" stage (i.e. early waning-gibbous phase). :Sometime in Warring States period, a change occured that 子 became the first earthly branch and 巳 (OC *s-ləʔ) filled the void of the sixth earthly branch (Matsumaru, 2015), "due to phonological closeness (combined with the semantic opacity of the Branch terms at later eras)" (Smith, 2011). :Association with the rat was possibly arbitrary, analogous to how 辰, the fifth earthly branch, was arbitrarily associated with the dragon (Ferlus, 2013).