Qīngdài guānyuán de màozi shàng chā zhe huālíng biǎoshì pǐnjí.
A Qing official's hat was topped with a peacock feather as a mark of rank.
Tips
history
翎 rarely stands alone in modern Chinese; it lives on in compounds like 花翎 (the peacock-feather rank badge of Qing officials) and 雁翎 (goose quill). It pairs the phonetic 令 with the feather radical 羽.
register
Literary and historical; used in set compounds and old texts rather than as a free word in everyday speech.
