Meaning & readings
bake, burning
On’yomi ショウ
Kun’yomi や.く、や.き、や.き-、-や.き、や.ける
Nanori やい、やき
Origin
The character 焼 combines fire (火) on the left with a component suggesting height or illumination on the right. The fire radical clearly signals that this character relates to heat and burning. The right component (尭) contributes the sound value, helping speakers remember how to pronounce the character. Together, these parts create a character that literally points to fire and its effects—the visual pairing of the flame radical with a phonetic component makes sense for words like "baking" and "burning," where fire is the central action.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).
Components
- 火
- 尭
Common words
- 焼く やく to burn
- 焼却 しょうきゃく incineration; destruction by fire
- 焼酎 しょうちゅう shōchū; Japanese spirit distilled from sweet potatoes, rice, etc.
- 全焼 ぜんしょう total destruction by fire; being burned down
- 燃焼 ねんしょう burning; combustion
- 焼肉 やきにく yakiniku; Japanese dish of grilled meat similar to Korean barbecue
- 焼死 しょうし death by fire
- 焼き芋 やきいも roasted sweet potato; baked sweet potato
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 86
- Grade
- Grade 4 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #982 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+0713C