字 Kanji Decipher

Meaning & readings

world, boundary

On’yomi カイ

Origin

The character 界 combines a sound hint with a meaningful component. The bottom part 介 tells you roughly how to pronounce it (kai). The top part 田, which pictures a field or grid divided into sections, carries the meaning — it represents division or boundaries. By putting these together, the character came to mean a boundary or dividing line between areas, and by extension, a whole realm or world defined by its boundaries.

界 9 strokes

Components

  • 田 radical top
  • 介 sound hint bottom

A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.

Common words

  • 下界 げかい the earth below; the ground below
  • 界隈 かいわい neighborhood; neighbourhood
  • 学界 がっかい academic world; academia
  • 官界 かんかい bureaucratic world; government circles
  • 境界 きょうかい boundary; border
  • 業界 ぎょうかい business world; business circles
  • 限界 げんかい limit; bound
  • 財界 ざいかい financial world; business circles

Related kanji

Same sound component 介
Same radical

Reference

Strokes
9
Kangxi radical
102
Formation type
Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
Grade
Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
Frequency rank
#158 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 3
Unicode
U+0754C