Meaning & readings
yesterday, previous
On’yomi サク
Origin
This character combines the sun radical (日) on the left, which marks the character as relating to time or days, with a sound component (乍) on the right that hints at the pronunciation. The sun radical makes sense for a time-related word since the sun's daily cycle marks the passage of days. By pairing this meaning element with the sound hint, the character came to represent a specific time concept—yesterday, or the day that has already passed.
Components
- 日
- 乍
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
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 72
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 4 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #226 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+06628