Meaning & readings
hair of the head
Origin
This character combines the hair radical at the top, which shows strands of hair falling down, with the component 友 (meaning "friend") at the bottom, which serves as a sound hint for pronunciation. The hair radical makes the meaning clear — the character refers to hair on the head. The 友 component doesn't add meaning; it's there primarily to suggest how the character should sound, helping readers know to pronounce it with the "hatsu" or "kami" sounds. Together, the visual component tells you what the word means while the sound hint guides pronunciation.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 髟
- 友
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 14
- Kangxi radical
- 190
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1474 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+09AEA