Meaning & readings
park, garden, yard, farm
On’yomi エン
Kun’yomi その
Nanori おん、ぞの
Origin
The character 園 combines a square enclosure radical 囗, which represents a walled or bounded area, with the component 袁 in the middle that serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation. The square frame makes sense for a garden or park, since these are defined spaces set apart from the surrounding landscape. The overall structure suggests a contained area of land, which is the core meaning of garden or farm. Over time, the character came to represent any organized outdoor space used for cultivation or leisure.
Components
- 囗
- 袁
- 囗
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
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 31
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #628 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05712