Meaning & readings
smoke
Origin
Smoke rises from fire, so the character combines the fire radical on the left to show what kind of thing we're talking about. The component on the right serves as a sound hint for how to pronounce the word in Chinese, giving it the "en" sound. Together, the left part anchors the meaning to fire and heat, while the right part guides speakers toward the correct pronunciation without adding extra meaning of its own.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 火
- 垔
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 86
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1290 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+07159