Meaning & readings
curriculum, continuation, passage of time
Origin
The character 歴 combines 止, which means "foot" or "step," with 厤 as a sound hint for pronunciation. The idea of stepping forward or progressing step by step came to represent the passage of time and the continuous flow of events—like walking through years or following a path through history. Over time, this extended to mean a record of that progression, such as a curriculum or one's personal history. The 止 component acts as a semantic classifier to signal this meaning involves progress or continuation.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 厤V
- 止
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 14
- Kangxi radical
- 77
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #632 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+06B74