Meaning & readings
witch, demon, evil spirit
On’yomi マ
Origin
The character 魔 combines two parts to represent a demon or witch. The right side, 鬼, means ghost or spirit and establishes the character's supernatural meaning. The left side, 麻, primarily serves as a sound hint for how to pronounce the character — it doesn't contribute a meaning about demons themselves, but tells you roughly how it should be said. Together, the "ghost" meaning paired with this sound component created a character specifically for referring to malevolent supernatural beings like demons and witches.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 21
- Kangxi radical
- 194
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1514 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+09B54