Meaning & readings
delicate, minuteness, insignificance
On’yomi ビ
Kun’yomi かす.か
Nanori み
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.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (微).
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 60
- Formation type
- Pictographic or simple
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1108 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+05FAE