Meaning & readings
judgement, judgment, signature, stamp, seal
Origin
The character 判 combines two parts: the left side is 半, which sounds like "han" and serves as a sound hint for the character's pronunciation. The right side is 刂, a small knife or blade radical that indicates this character relates to cutting or dividing. Together, these components suggest the idea of using a blade to cut or divide something in two, which evolved into the meaning of making a judgment or decision — essentially "cutting through" a matter to reach a verdict. The seal or signature sense likely developed because official judgments were marked with stamps or signatures to make them authoritative.
Components
- 半
- 刂
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
- 18
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #197 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05224