字 Kanji Decipher

Meaning & readings

nightfall, night

On’yomi バン

Origin

The character 晩 combines the sun radical 日 on the left, which relates to time and celestial cycles, with 免 on the right as a sound hint that tells you how to pronounce the character. The sun radical makes sense for a word about time of day, and specifically about the evening when the sun is low or gone. The overall shape represents the idea of the sun at the end of its daily journey, which naturally connects to the meaning of nightfall or evening.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).

晩 12 strokes

Components

  • 日 radical left
  • 免 sound hint right

A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.

Common words

  • 一晩 ひとばん one night; one evening
  • 今晩 こんばん tonight; this evening
  • 昨晩 さくばん last night
  • 朝晩 あさばん morning and evening
  • 晩婚 ばんこん late marriage
  • 晩酌 ばんしゃく drink at home with one's evening meal; dinner-time drink
  • 晩年 ばんねん one's later years; final years (in life)
  • 毎晩 まいばん every night

Related kanji

Same sound component 免
Same radical

Reference

Strokes
12
Kangxi radical
72
Grade
Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
Frequency rank
#1424 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 2
Unicode
U+06669