Meaning & readings
sparkle, clear, crystal
On’yomi ショウ
Nanori あ、あき、あきら、ひかり、まさ
Origin
This character is made of three stacked squares, each representing the sun. When you stack multiple suns together, the image suggests brightness multiplied — something shining so intensely it becomes crystalline and clear. The three-fold repetition visually conveys the idea of sparkling brilliance, which is why the character came to mean sparkle, clarity, and crystal.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (晶).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 72
- Formation type
- Pictographic or simple
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1613 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+06676