Meaning & readings
difference, differ
Origin
This character combines the "walk" radical on the left, which suggests movement or going, with the sound component 韋 (wěi) on the right, which tells you roughly how to pronounce the character. The "walk" radical hints at the core idea: when two paths go in different directions, they diverge or differ from each other. Over time, the meaning expanded from the physical sense of paths diverging to the abstract notion of things being different or not matching. The character's structure tells you both what it means—something about divergence—and how it sounds, through these two working parts together.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 韋
- ⻌
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 162
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #344 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+09055