Meaning & readings
guess, presume, surmise, judge, understand
Origin
The character 察 combines a roof component (宀) that suggests something inside a house or enclosed space, with 祭 at the bottom, which serves as a sound hint for the character's pronunciation. The roof element frames the idea of observing or examining something carefully — like looking at what's happening inside a private space. Over time, this visual metaphor of close, attentive observation evolved into the meaning of "guessing" or "understanding" through careful judgment. The bottom component tells you roughly how to pronounce it, but doesn't contribute to the meaning itself.
Components
- 宀
- 祭
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
- 14
- Kangxi radical
- 40
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 4 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #477 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05BDF