Meaning & readings
prohibition, ban, forbid
On’yomi キン
Origin
The character 禁 shows a forest (林, two or three trees stacked together) positioned above 示, which represents a sacred altar or divine will. The idea is that a forest was a place where the sacred and natural worlds met, often subject to restrictions and divine rules. By combining the image of the forest with the symbol for sacred authority, the character came to mean prohibition or a ban enforced by higher powers. Over time, this specific reference to forest restrictions broadened to mean any kind of ban or forbidden rule.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).
Common words
- 解禁 かいきん lifting a ban; raising an embargo
- 監禁 かんきん confinement; imprisonment
- 禁煙 きんえん abstaining from smoking; quitting smoking
- 禁句 きんく taboo word; forbidden topic
- 禁錮 きんこ imprisonment (without forced labour); incarceration
- 禁止 きんし prohibition; inhibition
- 禁酒 きんしゅ abstinence from alcohol; temperance
- 禁制 きんせい prohibition; ban
Reference
- Strokes
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 113
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #681 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+07981