Meaning & readings
exquisite, strange, queer, mystery, miracle, excellent, delicate, charming
Origin
The character 妙 combines "woman" (女) on the left with "few" or "small" (少) on the right. In classical Chinese, the idea of something small or subtle, especially when paired with the feminine principle, came to suggest qualities that are delicate, refined, and mysteriously wonderful — things that are excellent precisely because they are rare or hard to grasp. Over time, this blend of meanings evolved to cover everything from exquisite beauty to strange and miraculous things, all connected to that sense of something subtle and exceptional.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 7
- Kangxi radical
- 38
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1122 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+05999