Meaning & readings
sigh, lament, moan, grieve, sigh of admiration
Origin
This character combines the mouth radical on the left, which marks it as relating to sounds made with the mouth, with a right-side component that provides a sound hint for pronunciation. The overall shape depicts the physical act of sighing or lamenting—the mouth opening to release a deep sound of sorrow or emotion. Because sighing is a natural vocal expression of grief, regret, or sometimes awe, the character came to mean both lamenting and expressing admiration. The mouth radical makes sense here since sighing is fundamentally an audible breath, a sound that communicates inner feeling without words.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Pictographic or simple.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (嘆).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 30
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1584 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+05606