Meaning & readings
shadow, silhouette, phantom
On’yomi エイ
Kun’yomi かげ
Origin
The character 影 combines a sound hint on the left with a visual classifier on the right. The left component 景 (kei) provides a pronunciation guide, suggesting how to say the character. The right component 彡, which originally depicted three strokes or threads, acts as a classifier indicating something related to appearance or form. Together, these parts create a character for shadow or silhouette — an image or form that appears but has no substance, much like how a shadow mimics an object's outline without being solid.
Components
- 景
- 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
- 15
- Kangxi radical
- 59
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #464 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+05F71