Meaning & readings
star, spot, dot, mark
On’yomi セイ、ショウ
Kun’yomi ほし、-ぼし
Origin
The character 星 combines two parts: the component 日, which represents the sun or a celestial body, and 生 below it, which serves as a sound hint for pronunciation rather than contributing to the meaning. The upper part 日 makes sense for a star since stars are bright objects in the sky like the sun. The lower component 生 doesn't mean "life" or "birth" in this context—it's simply there to suggest how the character should be pronounced. Over time, this combination became the standard way to write the word for star in Japanese and Chinese.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 72
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #844 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+0661F