Meaning & readings
engrave, cut fine, chop, hash, mince, time, carving
Origin
This character pairs a knife radical on the right, which points toward the meaning of cutting or engraving, with a phonetic component on the left that hints at pronunciation. The knife element makes the core meaning clear: you are doing something with a blade. Over time, the idea of cutting precisely led to meanings like engraving fine details into a surface, and eventually to marking time itself in small increments or moments. The left component doesn't contribute a separate meaning but rather signals how the character should sound when spoken.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 亥
- 刂
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 8
- Kangxi radical
- 18
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #866 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+0523B