Meaning & readings
year-end, age, occasion, opportunity
On’yomi サイ、セイ
Kun’yomi とし、とせ、よわい
Origin
This character combines the idea of stopping or standing (止) with the element 戌, which represents the eleventh of the twelve zodiac animals and also marks a specific point in time. Together, these components suggest a fixed point or marker in the passage of time—the idea of reaching an endpoint or completing a cycle, which naturally connects to the concept of a year passing or growing older. The character's meaning of "age" and "year" comes from this sense of time accumulating through completed cycles.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 77
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #269 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+06B73