Meaning & readings
outside
Origin
The character 外 combines two components to show something outside or external. The left part, 夕 (meaning evening or night), serves as a sound hint for the character's pronunciation rather than contributing to its meaning. The right part, 卜, represents divination or a divining rod, which originally suggested the idea of something pointing outward or away. Together, these parts create a character whose shape and components work together to express the concept of something that lies beyond or outside a boundary.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 夕
- 卜
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 5
- Kangxi radical
- 36
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #81 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 4
- Unicode
- U+05916