Meaning & readings
disaster, calamity, woe, curse, evil
Origin
This character shows fire (the bottom component, which looks like flames) combined with a sound hint at the top that suggests the pronunciation. Fire was paired with this particular sound element to create a character meaning disaster or calamity, since destructive fires were among the most feared disasters in ancient times. The fire component makes the semantic connection clear — flames bring destruction and suffering — while the top element tells you roughly how to pronounce the word.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 巛
- 火
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 7
- Kangxi radical
- 86
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #976 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+0707D