Meaning & readings
tooth, cog
On’yomi シ
Kun’yomi よわい、は、よわ.い、よわい.する
Origin
This character most likely pictures a tooth or row of teeth. The upper part resembles the crown of a tooth with its pointed tip, while the lower sections suggest the root or multiple teeth lined up together. Over time, the strokes became more stylized and geometric, but the basic visual idea of a tooth remained. Because teeth have a similar structure to the cogs or gears in machinery, the character naturally extended to mean "cog" as well.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (歯).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 77
- Formation type
- Pictographic or simple
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1106 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+06B6F