字 Kanji Decipher

Meaning & readings

beach

On’yomi ガン
Kun’yomi きし
Nanori けし

Origin

The character 岸 shows a mountain (山) sitting above a sound hint (厂干) that helps indicate how to pronounce it. The mountain component makes sense because a beach is often where a mountain or high ground meets the water's edge — it's a rocky or elevated shore. The bottom part is just a phonetic hint that tells you roughly how the character sounds, without adding to the meaning itself. Over time, this combination of "mountain + sound marker" became the standard way to write the word for beach or shore.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).

岸 8 strokes

Components

  • 山 radical top
  • 厂干 sound hint bottom

A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.

Common words

  • 沿岸 えんがん coast; shore
  • 海岸 かいがん seashore; coast
  • 岸壁 がんぺき quay; wharf
  • 岸辺 きしべ shore; bank (of a body of water)
  • 護岸 ごがん river dike
  • 川岸 かわぎし riverbank; riverside
  • 対岸 たいがん opposite shore
  • 彼岸 ひがん equinoctial week (when Buddhist services are held)

Related kanji

Same radical

Reference

Strokes
8
Kangxi radical
46
Grade
Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
Frequency rank
#556 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 2
Unicode
U+05CB8