Meaning & readings
diarrhea
Origin
The character 痢 combines the radical 疒, which marks diseases and physical ailments, with 利, which serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation "ri." The 疒 component on the left tells you this character names a sickness, while 利 guides how to pronounce it. Together they create a character that specifically names a digestive illness, building the meaning through the disease classifier and anchoring the sound through the phonetic component.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 疒
- 利
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 104
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #2037 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+075E2