Meaning & readings
exam, school, printing, proof, correction
Origin
This character combines wood (木) on the left as a classifier indicating it relates to something made of wood, with a sound hint (交) on the right that suggests how the character should be pronounced. Historically, the character likely originally referred to a wooden frame or stand used to hang things for inspection or comparison. From this concrete sense of examining or checking against a standard, the meanings expanded to include proofreading and correction, and eventually the modern sense of a school — a place where knowledge is examined and checked. The wooden-frame origin connects to printing and proofreading through the practice of comparing printed sheets against originals by hanging them side by side.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 10
- Kangxi radical
- 75
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 1 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #294 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 4
- Unicode
- U+06821