Meaning & readings
sink, be submerged, subside, be depressed, aloes
On’yomi チン、ジン
Kun’yomi しず.む、しず.める
Nanori しん
Origin
This character combines water (shown by the three-dot radical on the left) with a sound hint on the right that helps indicate how to pronounce it. The water radical makes sense for the meanings: when something sinks or becomes submerged, it goes down into water. The right component is there mainly to show you roughly how the character is pronounced, not to add meaning. Over time, the combination of "water" with this sound marker became the standard way to write the word for sinking or being depressed.
Components
- 氵
- 冘
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 7
- Kangxi radical
- 85
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1271 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+06C88