Meaning & readings
wash, inquire into, probe
Origin
The character 洗 combines water on the left, shown by the three-stroke water radical, with 先 (sen) on the right. The 先 component provides a sound hint for how to pronounce the character rather than contributing to its meaning. Since washing fundamentally involves water, the water radical carries the core meaning, while 先 tells you the character sounds like "sen" in Japanese. Over time, the "wash" meaning extended to include "to inquire into" or "to probe," as if you're washing away layers to get to the truth underneath.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 氵
- 先
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 85
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1168 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+06D17