Origin

The character 精 combines rice (米) on the left, which represents grain and refined food, with blue-green (青) on the right, which serves as a sound hint for how the character is pronounced. The idea of refining rice grain by grain — removing impurities to get something pure and concentrated — led to the broader meanings of "refined" and later "essential energy" or "vitality." Over time, the sense of something distilled or concentrated extended to mean spirit, ghost, or fairy — invisible essences thought to gather in refined or pure forms. The rice component grounds the character's root meaning in the concrete act of refinement.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).