Meaning & readings

store, shop

On’yomi テン
Kun’yomi みせ、たな

Origin

The character combines a roof radical (广) representing a building or structure with the component , which serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation. The roof indicates a physical place, while provides a clue to how the character should be pronounced. Together, these elements create a character that represents a roofed structure where commerce happens—a shop or store. This is a typical phono-semantic construction where the visual part (roof) carries the meaning and the sound part helps you remember how to say it.

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

8 strokes

Components

  • 广 radical top-left wrap
  • sound hint tarec

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

Common words

  • 開店 かいてん opening a new shop
  • 支店 してん branch office; branch store
  • 書店 しょてん bookshop; bookstore
  • 商店 しょうてん shop; store
  • 店員 てんいん employee (of a store); shop assistant
  • 店主 てんしゅ shopkeeper; storekeeper
  • 店先 みせさき storefront; shopfront
  • 店長 てんちょう shop manager

Reference

Strokes
8
Kangxi radical
53
Grade
Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
Frequency rank
#378 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 4
Unicode
U+05E97