Meaning & readings
hearing, judge, trial
Origin
This character combines the roof radical, which often appears in characters about houses or enclosed spaces, with the component for "番" meaning turn or order. Together they suggest the idea of examining something carefully within a defined space or structure. The sense of "judging" or "hearing a trial" developed from this image of sitting under a roof to carefully review and evaluate matters in an orderly, thorough way. Over time, the character came to represent the deliberate, systematic examination that happens during a trial or legal hearing.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).
Components
- 宀
- 番
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 15
- Kangxi radical
- 40
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #412 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+05BE9