Meaning & readings
brush-stroke, picture
Origin
This character combines a frame or boundary (the box-like components 凵 and 由) with a horizontal line 一 to suggest the idea of dividing or marking within a space. The enclosed area represents a framed surface—like a canvas or page—while the marks within it suggest lines drawn or painted on that surface. Over time, this visual idea of marked boundaries came to mean "picture" or "brush-stroke," since creating pictures and brush-strokes both involve marking off and filling defined spaces. The character essentially shows the action of drawing within a contained frame.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 8
- Kangxi radical
- 102
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #199 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+0753B