Meaning & readings
boundary, border, region
Origin
The character 境 combines the element 土, meaning earth or ground, with 竟 on the right side. The 土 component classifies this as a character about something physical or territorial. The 竢 component acts as a sound hint, suggesting how the character should be pronounced. Together, the earth element plus the sound component create a character that refers to the edge or division of land — a boundary or border between regions. This makes visual sense: boundaries are something concrete that exists in physical space, just like the ground itself.
Components
- 土
- 竟
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 越境 えっきょう crossing a border (illegally); border violation
- 佳境 かきょう most interesting part (of a story); climax
- 環境 かんきょう environment; surroundings
- 逆境 ぎゃっきょう adverse circumstances; unfortunate situation
- 境界 きょうかい boundary; border
- 境遇 きょうぐう one's circumstances; environment
- 境地 きょうち state (of mind); mental state
- 境内 けいだい grounds (esp. of shrines and temples); compound
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 14
- Kangxi radical
- 32
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #346 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05883