Meaning & readings
wall, lining (stomach), fence
On’yomi ヘキ
Kun’yomi かべ
Origin
The character 壁 combines earth or soil (土) at the bottom with a sound hint (辟) at the top. The earth radical makes sense because walls are built from earth, mud bricks, or stone—fundamentally materials from the ground. The top component doesn't contribute a meaning about walls; instead it provides a rough guide to pronunciation. Over time, this combination of an earth-based material indicator with a sound hint became the standard way to write the word for wall or fence in Japanese and Chinese.
Components
- 辟
- 土
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
- 16
- Kangxi radical
- 32
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1037 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+058C1