Meaning & readings
blow, breathe, puff, emit, smoke
On’yomi スイ
Kun’yomi ふ.く
Nanori ふき
Origin
This character combines the mouth (口) on the left with a component showing a person's body bent backward (欠), which originally depicted yawning or the act of opening one's mouth wide. Together, these parts create an image of air or breath coming from the mouth—the idea of blowing or breathing out. The left component marks that this action involves the mouth specifically, while the right component suggests the forceful or open-mouthed nature of the action. Over time, this visual combination came to represent all kinds of blowing, breathing, and emitting sounds or substances from the mouth.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 7
- Kangxi radical
- 30
- Formation type
- Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1133 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05439