Meaning & readings
carve, engrave, chisel
Origin
The character combines two parts: on the left, 周 (which sounds like "shuu") provides a sound hint for how to pronounce the character, while on the right, 彡 is a classifying marker made of three short strokes that represent hair, threads, or fine lines — visual marks that suggest cutting or etching into a surface. Together, these components indicate a word for carving or engraving: the sound hint tells you roughly how to say it, while the line-marks on the right hint at the scratches or grooves left behind by a chisel or blade. This combination helped ancient writers group and remember characters related to detailed handiwork and surface modification.
Components
- 周
- 彡
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
- 59
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1533 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+05F6B