Meaning & readings
responsibility, duty, term, entrust to, appoint
Origin
The character 任 combines a person radical on the left with the component 壬 on the right, which acts as a sound hint for the pronunciation nin. The core idea comes from the visual of a person, which naturally connects to concepts of human responsibility and duty. Over time, the character evolved to mean assigning someone to a role or task—hence "entrust to" and "appoint"—because these actions fundamentally involve placing responsibility on a person. The right component's main job is to indicate how the character should be pronounced, rather than contributing meaning of its own.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 亻
- 壬
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 委任 いにん entrusting; charge
- 一任 いちにん entrusting (everything to); leaving (a matter) entirely with
- 解任 かいにん dismissal (from a post); discharge
- 兼任 けんにん serving concurrently as; holding the additional post of
- 後任 こうにん successor
- 再任 さいにん reappointment
- 在任 ざいにん being in office
- 辞任 じにん resignation (from a position)
Reference
- Strokes
- 6
- Kangxi radical
- 9
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #217 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+04EFB