字 Kanji Decipher

Meaning & readings

dislike, detest, hate

On’yomi ケン、ゲン
Kun’yomi きら.う、きら.い、いや

Origin

The character combines the radical for "woman" on the left with a phonetic component on the right that hints at the pronunciation. The left side, meaning "woman," appears to have been chosen to classify the emotional or personal nature of the feeling. In classical Chinese, this character developed to express the emotion of dislike or aversion—displeasure that arises from a personal reaction. The right component doesn't contribute to the meaning itself but signals roughly how the character should sound.

嫌 13 strokes

Components

  • 女 radical left
  • 兼 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

  • 機嫌 きげん humour; humor
  • 嫌い きらい disliking; hating
  • 嫌う きらう to hate; to dislike
  • 嫌悪 けんお disgust; hate
  • 嫌疑 けんぎ suspicion (of having committed a crime, wrongdoing)
  • 嫌気 いやき dislike; disgust
  • 上機嫌 じょうきげん good humour (humor); good mood
  • 大嫌い だいきらい hating; strongly disliking

Related kanji

Same sound component 兼
Same radical

Easily confused with

These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.

Reference

Strokes
13
Kangxi radical
38
Formation type
Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
Grade
Jōyō (secondary school)
Frequency rank
#1207 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 1
Unicode
U+05ACC