Meaning & readings
ardent, violent, vehement, furious, severe, extreme
On’yomi レツ
Kun’yomi はげ.しい
Nanori やす
Origin
This character combines fire (灬) at the bottom with 列, which serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation. The fire radical makes the meaning clear: the character refers to something intense and burning, like flames that are fierce and uncontrolled. By adding the fire radical to 列, the character came to express the idea of ardent, violent, or extreme intensity—as if describing an intense, blazing fire. The 列 component itself doesn't contribute meaning here, but rather guides speakers toward the correct sound when reading the character.
Components
- 列
- 灬
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 10
- Kangxi radical
- 86
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1397 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+070C8