Meaning & readings
phantasm, vision, dream, illusion, apparition
On’yomi ゲン
Kun’yomi まぼろし
Origin
This character appears to picture something insubstantial or fleeting. The shape suggests threads or wisps, capturing the idea of something that seems to exist but vanishes when you try to grasp it — much like how an illusion or phantom appears real at first glance but dissolves under closer inspection. The minimal, delicate strokes reinforce the sense of something vague and hard to pin down, which is why the character came to mean phantasm, vision, and illusion.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (幻).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 4
- Kangxi radical
- 52
- Formation type
- Pictographic or simple
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1564 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+05E7B