Meaning & readings

chair

On’yomi イ

Origin

This character combines wood (the left component) with a sound hint on the right. The character for wood, a basic classifier, indicates that a chair is made of wood—a natural material shaped into furniture. The right component provides a pronunciation guide rather than additional meaning. Together, the wooden material classifier paired with this phonetic element creates the character for chair, reflecting how chairs are typically wooden objects in the context where this character developed.

椅 12 strokes

Components

  • 木 radical left
  • 奇 meaning part right

Common words

Easily confused with

These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.

Reference

Strokes
12
Kangxi radical
75
Formation type
Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
Grade
Jōyō (secondary school)
Frequency rank
#2245 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
—
Unicode
U+06905