Meaning & readings
write
Origin
The top part, 聿, is a brush or writing instrument, which directly represents the act of writing. The bottom part, 日, serves as a sound hint for pronunciation rather than adding meaning to the character. By combining the image of a brush with this sound component, the character 書 came to mean "write" — the visual reference to the writing tool made the meaning clear, while the phonetic element helped people remember how to pronounce it.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 聿
- 日
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 遺書 いしょ note left by a dead person; suicide note
- 願書 がんしょ (written) application; written request
- 教書 きょうしょ message (delivered by the US president or a state governor); address
- 原書 げんしょ original document (not a copy or adaptation); book in its original language (esp. a European language)
- 古書 こしょ old book; rare book
- 司書 ししょ librarian
- 辞書 じしょ dictionary; lexicon
- 書く かく to write; to compose
Reference
- Strokes
- 10
- Kangxi radical
- 73
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #169 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 4
- Unicode
- U+066F8