Meaning & readings
England, English, hero, outstanding, calyx
Origin
The character 英 combines a grass radical at the top with the component 央 below it, which serves as a sound hint for pronunciation rather than meaning. The grass radical suggests something plant-related, and this character originally referred to flower calyxes or the finest parts of plants—the beautiful outer covering of a flower. Over time, the meaning expanded to describe anything excellent or outstanding, and eventually people in Japan used it to represent England and English, partly because of the way the word sounds. The connection between "finest plant parts" and "hero" or "outstanding" reflects how the character came to symbolize excellence and superiority.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 艹
- 央
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 育英 いくえい education of gifted young people; providing financial support to gifted students
- 英気 えいき great wisdom; excellent disposition
- 英語 えいご English (language)
- 英国 えいこく United Kingdom; Britain
- 英字 えいじ English letter; alphabetic character
- 英文 えいぶん English writing; English sentence
- 英訳 えいやく English translation
- 英雄 えいゆう hero; heroine
Reference
- Strokes
- 8
- Kangxi radical
- 140
- Grade
- Grade 4 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #430 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+082F1