字 Kanji Decipher

Meaning & readings

blind, blind man, ignoramus

On’yomi モウ
Kun’yomi めくら

Origin

The character 盲 combines the eye radical 目 at the bottom, which shows this character relates to vision, with 亡 at the top, which serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation. Since a blind person cannot see properly, the character uses the eye radical as a way to classify it as a vision-related word. The sound component 亡 guides how the character is pronounced, while the meaning—blindness—comes from pairing the eye radical with the concept of something being lost or gone wrong.

盲 8 strokes

Components

  • 亡 sound hint top
  • 目 radical bottom

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

Common words

  • 盲人 もうじん blind person
  • 盲腸 もうちょう cecum; caecum
  • 盲点 もうてん blind spot (on the retina)
  • 盲目 もうもく blindness
  • 盲学校 もうがっこう school for the blind
  • 盲導犬 もうどうけん guide dog; seeing-eye dog

Related kanji

Same sound component 亡
Same radical

Reference

Strokes
8
Kangxi radical
109
Formation type
Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
Grade
Jōyō (secondary school)
Frequency rank
#1767 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 1
Unicode
U+076F2