Meaning & readings
dose, medicine, drug
On’yomi ザイ、スイ、セイ
Kun’yomi かる、けず.る
Origin
This character combines a sound hint on the left with a meaning clue on the right. The right side, a small blade radical, suggests cutting or preparing something—which fits the idea of medicine being a prepared substance. The left component 斉 is a sound hint that guides the pronunciation. Together, the blade component and the sound hint create a character that means a measured dose of medicine or the medicine itself, which you might prepare or cut into portions.
Components
- 斉
- 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
- 10
- Kangxi radical
- 18
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1151 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+05264