Meaning & readings
round, full (month), perfection, -ship, pills, make round, roll up, curl up, seduce, explain away
Origin
The character 丸 appears to combine two simple elements to express the idea of roundness. The component 九 depicts something curved or bent, while the dot (丶) serves as a marker or classifier. Together, these strokes suggest a complete, enclosed form—the visual essence of something round or whole. Over time, this simple picture came to represent not just physical roundness, but also perfection and completeness, which is why it can mean "full" as in a full moon, or be used to describe pills, which are characteristically round.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).
Components
- 九
- 丶
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 3
- Kangxi radical
- 3
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #542 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+04E38