Meaning & readings
blossom, bloom
Origin
This character combines the mouth radical 口 on the left with a sound component 关 on the right that hints at how to pronounce it. The mouth radical appears here not in its literal sense but as a general classifier for words related to speech and expression. The overall character developed to represent the idea of blossoming or flowering, where the "opening" sense of the mouth radical connects metaphorically to the opening of flowers. The right component 关 provided the sound guide, helping readers know approximately how to say the word without the shape itself directly picturing a flower.
Components
- 口
- 关
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
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 30
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1534 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+054B2