Meaning & readings
pelt, skin, hide, leather, skin radical (no. 107)
On’yomi ヒ
Kun’yomi かわ
Origin
This character is a simple picture of skin or hide. The strokes represent the layers and surface texture of an animal pelt or human skin, drawn in a way that early Chinese writers recognized as depicting something flexible and covering. Over time, the pictorial shape became more abstract and standardized into the form we see today, but it still carries the meaning of skin, leather, or hide because of its visual origin.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (皮).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 5
- Kangxi radical
- 107
- Formation type
- Pictographic or simple
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1092 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+076AE