Meaning & readings
deep, heighten, intensify, strengthen
On’yomi シン
Kun’yomi ふか.い、-ぶか.い、ふか.まる、ふか.める、み-
Origin
The character 深 combines water (the three-stroke element on the left) with an element meaning "increase" or "layering" (on the right). Water that goes deep requires many layers of depth beneath the surface, so the combination came to represent the idea of something being deep or profound. The character captures how water extends downward into greater and greater depths, which then naturally extended to mean deepening in general—making something more intense or stronger.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (深).
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 85
- Formation type
- Pictographic or simple
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #484 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+06DF1