Meaning & readings
admirable, greatness, remarkable, conceited, famous, excellent
On’yomi イ
Kun’yomi えら.い
Nanori ひで
Origin
The character 偉 combines a person marker on the left with a sound component on the right that suggests the pronunciation イ (i). The person marker indicates this character relates to human qualities or traits. The right side acts as a sound guide rather than contributing to the meaning directly. Over time, the combination came to represent admirable or excellent qualities that distinguish a person, which is why it means greatness or being remarkable.
Components
- 亻
- 韋
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 9
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1639 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05049