Meaning & readings
make a deal, selling, dealing in, merchant
On’yomi ショウ
Kun’yomi あきな.う
Nanori あき
Origin
This character combines a sound hint with a meaning component. The top part, 立 (meaning "stand"), provides a pronunciation guide — it tells you roughly how to say the character. The bottom part, 冏, originally depicted a window or opening in a building, which came to represent a place where people gather and exchange goods. Together, these parts created a character for the activity of trading and dealing that happens in such commercial spaces, eventually coming to mean merchant or to make a deal.
Components
- 立
- 冏
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 30
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #413 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05546