Meaning & readings
coarse, rough, rugged
On’yomi ソ
Kun’yomi あら.い、あら-
Origin
The character 粗 combines the rice radical (米) on the left, which classifies this as a word about grain or rice products, with the sound hint (且) on the right, which suggests the pronunciation. The meaning "coarse" or "rough" likely comes from describing rice that is unrefined or not finely processed — the opposite of polished white rice. When rice grains are coarsely milled or left in their rough natural state, they appear uneven and unpolished, which led to the character's meaning of "rough" or "coarse" in a broader sense.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 119
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1689 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+07C97