Meaning & readings
ten thousand, 10,000
On’yomi マン、バン
Kun’yomi よろず
Nanori かず、ま、ゆる
Origin
This character most likely started as a picture of a scorpion, an animal that appears in large swarms. Because scorpions gather in huge numbers, the character came to mean "ten thousand" — the largest round number in East Asian counting systems, used to express any very large quantity. Over time the shape simplified into the three strokes you see today, which no longer look much like the original creature.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (万).
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 3
- Kangxi radical
- 1
- Formation type
- Pictographic or simple
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #375 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 4
- Unicode
- U+04E07