字 Kanji Decipher

Meaning & readings

poverty, poor

On’yomi ヒン、ビン
Kun’yomi まず.しい

Origin

The character 貧 combines two parts to express poverty. The bottom component, 貝 (shell), serves as the classifier that signals this character relates to money and wealth — shells were historically used as currency. The top component, 分, provides a sound hint for pronunciation rather than contributing to the meaning. Together, the character evokes the idea of lacking money or resources, which is why it came to mean poverty or being poor.

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

貧 11 strokes

Components

  • 分 sound hint top
  • 貝 radical bottom

A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.

Common words

  • 清貧 せいひん poverty without selfish desire; honourable poverty (honorable)
  • 貧血 ひんけつ anemia; anaemia
  • 貧困 ひんこん poverty; penury
  • 貧弱 ひんじゃく poor; meagre
  • 貧相 ひんそう poor-looking; impoverished-looking
  • 貧富 ひんぷ wealth and poverty; rich and poor
  • 貧乏 びんぼう poverty-stricken; destitute
  • 貧しい まずしい poor; needy

Related kanji

Same sound component 分
Same radical

Reference

Strokes
11
Kangxi radical
154
Grade
Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
Frequency rank
#1211 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 2
Unicode
U+08CA7