Meaning & readings
person in charge, connection, duty, concern oneself
Origin
This character combines a person radical on the left with a sound hint on the right. The right component, which resembles a thread or line, provides a clue to how the character is pronounced in Chinese-derived readings. The left side marks this as being about a person. Over time, the meaning evolved to describe someone who holds a connection or duty — a person who is "linked" or "tied" to a responsibility, much as a thread connects things. This became the sense of a person in charge or someone concerned with a particular matter.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 亻
- 系
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 9
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #232 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+04FC2