Meaning & readings
heavens, sky, imperial
On’yomi テン
Kun’yomi あまつ、あめ、あま-
Nanori あき、あも、た、たかし、て、なま
Origin
This character pictures the heavens as the vast space above humanity. The top stroke represents the sky or heavens themselves, while the large shape below represents a person or the human realm. By stacking these — the expansive above the earthly below — the character conveys the idea of the sky as what stretches endlessly over our heads. Over time, this visual idea of "the heavens" extended to mean imperial authority, since the emperor was believed to rule under heaven's mandate.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 4
- Kangxi radical
- 37
- Formation type
- Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
- Grade
- Grade 1 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #512 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 4
- Unicode
- U+05929