Meaning & readings
affair, case, matter, item
Origin
This character combines a person radical on the left with an ox or cattle on the right. The underlying idea appears to be a matter or affair involving livestock—perhaps a transaction, dispute, or agreement concerning animals, which were valuable property and common subjects of legal cases or formal dealings in ancient times. Over time, the specific reference to cattle faded, and the character came to mean any kind of affair, case, or item of business that needs to be counted or settled. The visual pairing of "person" with "ox" thus came to stand for the kinds of matters people had to deal with.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).
Components
- 亻
- 牛
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 6
- Kangxi radical
- 9
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #212 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+04EF6