Meaning & readings
hanging scroll, width
Origin
The character 幅 combines two parts. On the left is 巾, a component that refers to cloth or textile materials—think of it as a picture of fabric. On the right is 畐, which serves as a sound hint telling you roughly how to pronounce the character (フク). Together, the combination of cloth with this sound hint created a character meaning "width" or "hanging scroll"—both related to the width or expanse of cloth used in textiles and scroll paintings. The meaning fits naturally with the cloth component, while 畐 just guides you toward the correct pronunciation.
Components
- 巾
- 畐
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
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 50
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #641 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05E45