Meaning & readings
riot, war, disorder, disturb
On’yomi ラン、ロン
Kun’yomi みだ.れる、みだ.る、みだ.す、みだ、おさ.める、わた.る
Nanori ら
Origin
The character combines "tongue" (舌, on the left) with a curved shape (乙, on the right) to express the idea of disorder and chaos. The tongue represents something uncontrolled or moving wildly, while the right component may suggest twisting or confusion. Together, they paint a picture of things being jumbled and out of order—like a situation spiraling into riot or war. Over time, this visual metaphor became the standard way to write words meaning disorder, confusion, and disturbance in Japanese.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 7
- Kangxi radical
- 5
- Formation type
- Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #755 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+04E71