Meaning & readings
righteousness, justice, morality, honor, loyalty, meaning
Origin
The character 義 combines two parts. The top component 羊, meaning sheep, acts as a classifier suggesting the character relates to virtue or moral qualities — perhaps because sheep were valued animals associated with goodness in ancient cultures. The bottom component 我 serves as a sound hint, telling you roughly how to pronounce the character, but it does not directly contribute to the meaning. Together, these parts form a character that came to represent righteousness and justice, moral concepts that were considered valuable and worth following like a prized possession.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Common words
- 意義 いぎ meaning; significance
- 一義 いちぎ one meaning
- 疑義 ぎぎ doubt
- 義兄 ぎけい brother-in-law (spouse's older brother or older sister's husband)
- 義姉 ぎし sister-in-law (spouse's older sister or older brother's wife)
- 義歯 ぎし artificial tooth
- 義弟 ぎてい brother-in-law (spouse's younger brother or younger sister's husband)
- 義父 ぎふ father-in-law
Reference
- Strokes
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 123
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #415 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+07FA9