Meaning & readings
universal, wide(ly), generally, Prussia
On’yomi フ
Kun’yomi あまね.く、あまねし
Nanori しん、ひろ
Origin
The character combines two parts: the top part represents things arranged in a row or spread out, and the bottom part is a box shape representing the sun or a time period. Together, these components suggest something that spreads widely or extends everywhere, like sunlight that reaches all places equally. This visual idea of broad, even coverage led to the meaning "universal" or "widely." Over time, the character came to mean generally or commonly applied to many things.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 72
- Formation type
- Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #757 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+0666E