Meaning & readings
stocks, stump, shares, stock, counter for small plants
On’yomi シュ
Kun’yomi かぶ
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.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 10
- Kangxi radical
- 75
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #432 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+0682A