Meaning & readings
roof, house, shop, dealer, seller
On’yomi オク
Kun’yomi や
Nanori た
Origin
The character 屋 combines two elements to represent a house or shop. The left component 尸, which looks like a person in a bent position, serves as a classifier indicating a structure or space related to human activity. The right component 至 means "to arrive" or "to reach." Together, these suggest a place where people arrive and gather—a house or building where business happens. Over time, this combination came to mean any kind of roofed structure, including shops and the businesses conducted inside them.
Components
- 尸
- 至
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 44
- Formation type
- Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #616 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+05C4B