Meaning & readings
marriage
Origin
The character 婚 combines the radical for "woman" on the left with a sound component on the right that hints at how to pronounce it. The sound component 昏 suggests the "kon" pronunciation. By pairing the idea of a woman with a sound hint, the character came to mean "marriage" — specifically the union involving a woman. This is a common pattern in Japanese characters where a meaning-bearing component pairs with a separate piece that guides pronunciation.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 女
- 昏
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 38
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #767 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05A5A