Meaning & readings
character, letter, word, section of village
Origin
The character 字 combines a roof component on top with the character for "child" below. The roof component suggests something contained or enclosed, while the "child" part serves as a sound hint for how the character is pronounced. Over time, the meaning shifted from a literal idea of something under a roof to the abstract concept of a written character or letter — essentially, the smallest unit of writing that can stand alone, much like how a child is the smallest complete human form. The "child" sound hint stuck around even as the meaning evolved into referring to any written symbol or word.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 宀
- 子
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 一字 いちじ (one) letter; (one) character
- 英字 えいじ English letter; alphabetic character
- 活字 かつじ (piece of) type; movable type
- 漢字 かんじ kanji; Chinese character
- 誤字 ごじ misprint; misspelling
- 黒字 くろじ (being in) the black; surplus
- 字引 じびき dictionary
- 字画 じかく strokes in a Chinese character; stroke count of a Chinese character
Reference
- Strokes
- 6
- Kangxi radical
- 39
- Grade
- Grade 1 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #485 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+05B57