Meaning & readings
bough, branch, twig, limb, counter for branches
On’yomi シ
Kun’yomi えだ
Nanori え、ぐさ
Origin
The character combines the radical for tree (木) on the left with a sound component (支) on the right. The tree radical makes sense because branches are parts of trees. The right component is mainly there to suggest how the character should be pronounced, rather than to add meaning. Together, the visual of a tree with this phonetic hint creates the character for branch or bough — the smaller woody parts that grow from a tree's trunk.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 8
- Kangxi radical
- 75
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1401 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+0679D