Meaning & readings
milk, breasts
On’yomi ニュウ
Kun’yomi ちち、ち
Origin
This character combines two elements to represent milk and breasts. The left component suggests trust or nurturing, which connects to the idea of a mother caring for and feeding her child. The right component is a classifier marking this as a category related to the body or natural processes. Together, these parts build the concept of milk as the natural nourishment that comes from the body, particularly from a mother. Over time, the character came to mean both the milk itself and the breasts that produce it.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).
Components
- 孚
- 乙
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 8
- Kangxi radical
- 5
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1289 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+04E73