Meaning & readings
period, time, date, term
Origin
The character 期 combines two parts: on the left, 其 serves as a sound hint suggesting the pronunciation, while on the right, 月 (moon) acts as a classifier indicating the domain of meaning. Since the moon and months are closely connected—the lunar cycle was traditionally used to mark time—pairing moon with a sound component naturally created a character for "period" or "time." The moon's regular cycles made it the perfect visual anchor for expressing concepts of temporal intervals and fixed dates.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 其
- 月
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 74
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #117 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+0671F