Meaning & readings
part, minute of time, segment, share, degree, one's lot, duty, understand, know, rate, 1%, chances, shaku/100
Origin
This character shows a knife (刀) cutting something into two spreading parts (八). The eight radical at the top, which looks like something opening or dividing, combined with the knife below, creates a visual idea of splitting or dividing things apart. Over time, this picture of cutting into pieces came to mean any kind of division—whether you're splitting an object into parts, dividing time into minutes, or determining someone's share of something. The basic notion of "separation into pieces" expanded to cover all these related meanings.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 4
- Kangxi radical
- 18
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #24 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 4
- Unicode
- U+05206