The Chinese characters 件 meaning is piece; article; item.

Lamenting the injustice of class distinction, man drew a parallel from animal life: “The ox ploughs the field and the horse eats the grain.” When it came to picking a classifier for things in general, he favored representatives of the two nobler classes: man himself (亻) and his selfless ox (牛) and came up with 件: A classifier for anything from man (亻) to beast (牛).

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