Meaning & readings
curriculum, continuation, passage of time
On’yomi レキ、レッキ
Origin
The character 歴 combines 止, which means "foot" or "step," with 厤 as a sound hint for pronunciation. The idea of stepping forward or progressing step by step came to represent the passage of time and the continuous flow of events—like walking through years or following a path through history. Over time, this extended to mean a record of that progression, such as a curriculum or one's personal history. The 止 component acts as a semantic classifier to signal this meaning involves progress or continuation.
Components
- 厤V
- 止
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 14
- Kangxi radical
- 77
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #632 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+06B74