字 Kanji Decipher

Meaning & readings

lumber, log, timber, wood, materials, ingredients, talent

On’yomi ザイ
Nanori き、さい

Origin

The character 材 combines wood (木), the left component, with a sound hint (才) on the right that suggests how to pronounce it. Since wood is the meaningful part, the character naturally came to mean timber, lumber, and materials made from wood. The right side doesn't add a separate meaning—it's there mainly to guide pronunciation, while the wooden radical on the left carries all the semantic weight of what the character represents.

材 7 strokes

Components

  • 木 radical left
  • 才 sound hint right

A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.

Common words

  • 器材 きざい tools and materials; equipment and materials
  • 機材 きざい machinery and materials; equipment
  • 教材 きょうざい teaching materials
  • 建材 けんざい building material
  • 鋼材 こうざい steel material
  • 材質 ざいしつ material
  • 材木 ざいもく wood (for building); lumber
  • 材料 ざいりょう materials; ingredients

Related kanji

Same sound component 才
Same radical

Reference

Strokes
7
Kangxi radical
75
Formation type
Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
Grade
Grade 4 (Kyōiku)
Frequency rank
#565 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 2
Unicode
U+06750