Meaning & readings
falsehood, lie, deceive, pretend, counterfeit, forgery
On’yomi ギ、カ
Kun’yomi いつわ.る、にせ、いつわ.り
Origin
The character 偽 pairs the person radical on the left with the component 為 on the right, which serves as a sound hint for pronunciation rather than contributing a meaning. The left-hand person radical indicates this character relates to human behavior or character. The right component 為 suggests the sound without adding to the meaning—the combination thus represents the idea of a person engaging in deception or false behavior, which is how "falsehood" and "to deceive" came to be the character's meanings.
Components
- 亻
- 為
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 9
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1171 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+0507D