Meaning & readings
too much, myself, surplus, other, remainder
Origin
This character appears to picture a person (the left side) with something extra or overflowing beside them. The original drawing showed a figure with surplus material or goods—the idea being that when you have more than you need, there is something left over. Over time the shape became simplified into the modern form, but the core meaning stuck: something beyond what is necessary or required. That's why it came to mean "surplus," "remainder," "too much," and by extension, "I" or "myself" in older Japanese (the sense of one speaking as an individual separate from others).
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Pictographic or simple.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (余).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 7
- Kangxi radical
- 9
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #680 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+04F59