Origin

This character combines water (the three-dot radical on the left) with the character for "night," which serves as a sound hint for pronunciation rather than contributing to the meaning. The water radical directly indicates that this character refers to something liquid or fluid-based. The right component tells you roughly how to pronounce it but doesn't change what the word means—it's simply a phonetic guide that skilled readers of Chinese and Japanese could use to guess the sound. Together, the visual picture of water plus the sound hint creates a character that means liquid, juice, or any fluid substance.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).