Meaning & readings
convenience, facility, excrement, feces, letter, chance
Origin
This character combines a person (the left component) with the idea of change or progression (the right component). When a person can do things more easily or with less effort—when their work or movement becomes easier to handle—that represents convenience and efficiency. The character naturally extended to mean excrement as well, since this is a bodily function that happens regularly and inevitably, like a natural progression. Over time, the word also came to mean a letter or written message, probably because sending correspondence was once a practical convenience or opportunity that arose.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).
Components
- 亻
- 更
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 9
- Grade
- Grade 4 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #729 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+04FBF