Meaning & readings
stocks, stump, shares, stock, counter for small plants
Origin
This character combines the wood radical on the left, which marks it as relating to plants or trees, with a sound hint on the right that suggests its pronunciation. The wooden element makes sense because the original meaning of 株 was the stump or base of a tree left after cutting. Over time, Japanese speakers extended this metaphor to stocks and shares—just as a tree stump is a fixed thing from which growth continues, stock shares represent fixed portions of a company's value. The sound component helps readers know roughly how to pronounce the character, even if it doesn't add to the meaning.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 10
- Kangxi radical
- 75
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #432 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+0682A