Meaning & readings
history, chronicle
On’yomi シ
Nanori あきら、あや、お、こ、ちか、とし、なか、のぶ、ひさ、ひと、ふみ
Origin
This character most likely combines a box shape (representing a container or enclosed space) with a crossed or divided element inside. In ancient China, histories and records were kept as documents stored in official archives or repositories. The crossed marks may represent writing or the organization of information within those records. Over time, the visual idea of "a container holding organized information" came to represent the concept of history itself — the collected and preserved accounts of past events.
Components
- 口
- 乂
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 5
- Kangxi radical
- 30
- Formation type
- Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #511 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+053F2