Meaning & readings
icicle, ice, hail, freeze, congeal
On’yomi ヒョウ
Kun’yomi こおり、ひ、こお.る
Nanori すい
Origin
Water freezes and becomes hard and cold, so the character shows water (the left component) combined with a symbol representing the frozen, solid state. The two water radicals together emphasize the idea of water in a changed form — specifically, water that has turned to ice. The ancient Chinese combined these visual elements to create a character that directly shows what ice is: transformed water.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 5
- Kangxi radical
- 85
- Formation type
- Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1450 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+06C37