Meaning & readings
usual, ordinary, normal, common, regular, continually, always, long-lasting
Origin
This character combines a sound hint with a meaning component. The top part, 尚, provides a rough guide to pronunciation (sounding like "sho" or similar). The bottom part, 吊, originally depicted something suspended or hanging. The idea of something that stays in place, hangs around, or persists over time gradually developed into the meaning of "usual" or "continual" — the sense that certain things are always there, always the same. Over centuries of use, this pairing settled into meaning "ordinary" or "regular," describing what commonly or constantly occurs.
Components
- 尚
- 吊
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
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 50
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #293 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05E38