Meaning & readings
lower, short, humble
Origin
The left component 亻 is the "person" radical, which classifies this character as relating to people or their qualities. The right component 氐 acts as a sound hint, telling you roughly how to pronounce the character. Together, the combination suggests a quality that a person can have — specifically, the idea of being low, short, or in a humble position. The visual metaphor of "lowness" connects to the meaning: just as a person who is bent over or crouched down occupies a lower physical space, the character came to mean low in status, height, or value.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 亻
- 氐
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 7
- Kangxi radical
- 9
- Grade
- Grade 4 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #435 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+04F4E