Meaning & readings
difficult, impossible, trouble, accident, defect
Origin
The character 難 appears to combine the elements of a bird and a pile of sticks or branches. The upper portion resembles a bird, while the lower part depicts tangled or scattered wood. This composition likely came from the idea of a bird struggling to escape from or navigate through a tangle of branches and obstacles. The resulting image of entanglement and struggle became associated with the broader concepts of difficulty, trouble, and things that are hard to accomplish. Over time, this visual metaphor of being caught or blocked evolved into the character's modern meanings of difficult, impossible, and defects.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Pictographic or simple.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (難).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 18
- Kangxi radical
- 172
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #330 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+096E3