Meaning & readings
mid-air, air, space, sky, memorization, interval of time
Origin
The character 宙 combines a roof radical at the top, which indicates this character deals with something enclosed or a space under cover, with the component 由 below it that serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation. The roof creates a sense of a bounded area or interior space, while the bottom component suggests the character's sound. Together, these elements came to mean the space or air within an enclosed area, and by extension, the sky or space above us. Over time, the meaning expanded to include abstract concepts like intervals of time or the space between things.
Components
- 宀
- 由
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
- 8
- Kangxi radical
- 40
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1005 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05B99