Meaning & readings
destroy, ruin, overthrow, perish
Origin
The character combines water (氵, the left component) with a sound hint on the right made from the elements for "dog" and "fire." Water extinguishing or washing away fire became associated with destruction and ruin — the image of fire being doused and disappearing. The right side doesn't contribute to the meaning but tells you roughly how to pronounce the character. Over time, the visual idea of something being extinguished and destroyed stuck with this kanji, giving it the sense of complete annihilation or overthrow.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 氵
- 戌+火
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 隠滅 いんめつ destruction (esp. of evidence); spoliation
- 壊滅 かいめつ (complete) destruction; annihilation
- 幻滅 げんめつ disillusionment; disillusion
- 自滅 じめつ self-destruction; ruining oneself
- 消滅 しょうめつ extinction; extinguishment
- 絶滅 ぜつめつ extinction; extermination
- 全滅 ぜんめつ total destruction; complete destruction
- 点滅 てんめつ switching on and off (of a light); flashing
Reference
- Strokes
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 85
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1222 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+06EC5