Origin

This character combines a sound hint with a meaning classifier. The top part, 斬, provides a rough pronunciation guide — it tells you the character sounds like "zan." The bottom part, 日, is the radical for sun or day, which here acts as a classifier suggesting the character relates to time. Together, the shape came to mean a period of time — whether temporarily, a moment, or a while — because the sound component was attached to the time-related radical to create this specific meaning.