Meaning & readings
compare, race, ratio, Philippines
On’yomi ヒ
Kun’yomi くら.べる
Nanori い、ぴっ
Origin
This character appears to be a picture of two people standing side by side. The two vertical strokes represent two figures, and the way they are positioned next to each other visually suggests the act of placing things alongside one another to examine them. From this simple image of two entities positioned for direct comparison, the character came to mean "compare" or "ratio" — the basic idea of setting things next to each other to see how they measure up against one another.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (比).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 4
- Kangxi radical
- 81
- Formation type
- Pictographic or simple
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #329 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+06BD4