字 Kanji Decipher

Meaning & readings

consume, eat, drink, smoke, receive (a blow)

On’yomi キツ
Kun’yomi の.む

Origin

This character combines the mouth radical on the left, which flags that the character relates to something you do with your mouth, with the sound component on the right that provides a pronunciation hint. The right side comes from a character meaning "contract" or "agreement," but here it's just helping indicate how to say the word—roughly "kitsu." Together, the mouth indicator paired with this sound hint creates a character for consuming things by mouth, whether eating, drinking, or smoking.

喫 12 strokes

Components

  • 口 radical left
  • 契 sound hint right

A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.

Common words

  • 喫煙 きつえん smoking (tobacco)
  • 喫茶 きっさ tea drinking
  • 満喫 まんきつ having one's fill (of food or drink); eating (drinking) to one's heart's content
  • 喫する きっする to eat; to drink
  • 喫茶店 きっさてん coffee shop; tearoom

Related kanji

Same radical

Reference

Strokes
12
Kangxi radical
30
Formation type
Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
Grade
Jōyō (secondary school)
Frequency rank
#1347 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 2
Unicode
U+055AB