Meaning & readings
reflect, reflection, projection
On’yomi エイ
Kun’yomi うつ.る、うつ.す、は.える、-ば.え
Nanori あきら、え、てる
Origin
This character combines the sun radical 日 on the left with 央, which serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation. The core idea is that light from the sun can be reflected or cast onto a surface — when sunlight bounces off something or projects onto it, you see an image or reflection. The 央 component doesn't contribute to the meaning directly; it just signals roughly how the word should sound when spoken. Over time, the character expanded to cover the general sense of anything appearing, reflecting, or being projected, not just light.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 72
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #404 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+06620