Meaning & readings
forehead, tablet, plaque, framed picture, sum, amount, volume
Origin
The character 額 combines a radical for "head" or "page" on the right with a sound hint on the left that suggests how to pronounce it. The "head" radical connects this character to meanings about the forehead, the flat surface at the front of the face. Over time, the meaning expanded from the physical forehead to other flat surfaces you might see — like plaques, tablets, or framed pictures hung on walls — and then to abstract ideas like the amount written on a bill or invoice. The left component doesn't add meaning itself but rather signals roughly how the character should be read.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 客
- 頁
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 額縁 がくぶち (picture) frame
- 額面 がくめん face value; par
- 巨額 きょがく huge sum (esp. of money); enormous sum
- 金額 きんがく amount of money; sum
- 月額 げつがく monthly sum; monthly amount
- 減額 げんがく reduction (esp. in price or cost); diminution
- 高額 こうがく large sum (of money); large amount
- 差額 さがく balance; difference (in price, cost)
Reference
- Strokes
- 18
- Kangxi radical
- 181
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #407 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+0984D