Meaning & readings
utmost, most, extreme
On’yomi サイ、シュ
Kun’yomi もっと.も、つま
Nanori も
Origin
The character 最 combines two meaningful parts: 日, which represents the sun or a day, and 取, which means to take or seize. The idea is that if you take or seize the sun itself—the brightest and most prominent thing in the sky—you get something superlative or extreme. Over time, this visual metaphor came to mean "utmost" or "most" in the sense of reaching the highest degree or extreme point. The compound works by stacking these concepts to create an image of reaching for the ultimate or best.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 73
- Formation type
- Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
- Grade
- Grade 4 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #82 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+06700