Meaning & readings
delicate, minuteness, insignificance
Origin
The character 微 appears to combine "thread" (the left side, representing something very thin) with a phonetic component on the right that suggests the pronunciation. The core idea is that just as threads are among the smallest, most delicate things we can see, the character came to mean "minuteness" or "delicate." Over time, this sense expanded to include anything small, subtle, or insignificant. The visual foundation — something as fine as a thread — makes the connection between the shape and meaning quite direct.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Pictographic or simple.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (微).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 60
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1108 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+05FAE