Meaning & readings
idea, mind, heart, taste, thought, desire, care, liking
On’yomi イ
Nanori もと、よし
Origin
This character combines sound (音, at the top) with heart (心, at the bottom). In Chinese character formation, sound can represent thought or speech arising in the mind, while heart is the seat of feeling and intention. Together, these elements picture the idea of meaning or intention—the sound that carries what the heart intends to express. Over time, the character came to mean not just utterances but the broader concepts of idea, thought, and desire that motivate what we say and do.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 61
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #99 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+0610F