U+5148 "先" CJK Unified Ideograph-# Unicode Character
U+5148 "先" CJK Unified Ideograph-# is a Chinese character that primarily means "first," "before," "earlier," or "ancestor," and it is widely used in East Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. This ideograph is composed of the radical for "legs" or "human legs" (儿) beneath a component that originally depicted a foot stepping forward, conveying the idea of going ahead in time or priority. In modern usage, it appears in common words like "先生" (xiānsheng, meaning "teacher" or "Mr.") and "先週" (senshū, meaning "last week" in Japanese), and it also appears in historical contexts referring to predecessors or ancestors. The character is encoded in the CJK Unified Ideographs block, which covers shared characters in the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean writing traditions, making it a fundamental element in written communication across East Asia.