Meaning & readings
illuminate, shine, compare, bashful
Origin
The character 照 combines the sound hint 昭 at the top with the fire radical 灬 at the bottom. The fire radical, made of four small dots, classifies the character as relating to fire, light, or brightness. Together, this pairing tells you the character means to shine or illuminate—the fire component gives the meaning of light, while the top part provides a sound guide for pronunciation. The character 昭 itself contains elements relating to the sun and brightness, which reinforces the light-related sense even within the sound hint.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 昭
- 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
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 86
- Grade
- Grade 4 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1004 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+07167