Meaning & readings
previously, already, long ago
Origin
The character 既 combines two components to express the idea of something that has already happened. The left component 艮 relates to stopping or halting, which connects to the sense of something being completed or finished. The right component 旡 functions as a sound hint, giving you a clue about how to pronounce the character rather than adding to its meaning. Together, these parts create a character that originally meant something like a completed or past action, which evolved into the modern meanings of "already" and "previously."
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 艮
- 旡
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 10
- Kangxi radical
- 71
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1081 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+065E2