Meaning & readings
cool, cold (beer, person), chill
On’yomi レイ
Kun’yomi つめ.たい、ひ.える、ひ.や、ひ.ややか、ひ.やす、ひ.やかす、さ.める、さ.ます
Origin
The character 冷 combines two parts. On the left is 冫, a radical representing ice or coldness, which carries the core meaning. On the right is 令, which serves as a sound hint telling you roughly how to pronounce the character—it does not contribute to the meaning. Together, the ice radical paired with this sound component created a character that means cool or cold.
Components
- 冫
- 令
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 7
- Kangxi radical
- 15
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 4 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #667 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+051B7