字 Kanji Decipher

Meaning & readings

sleep, die, sleepy

On’yomi ミン
Kun’yomi ねむ.る、ねむ.い
Nanori ね

Origin

This character shows an eye (目) combined with a sound hint (民, which helps indicate the pronunciation "min"). The pairing makes sense: when you're sleepy, your eyes start to close and droop. By adding the sound component 民 to the eye radical, the character came to mean sleep or sleepiness. The sound component doesn't add meaning itself — it just tells you roughly how to pronounce the word.

眠 10 strokes

Components

  • 目 radical left
  • 民 sound hint right

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

Common words

  • 安眠 あんみん sound sleep; good sleep
  • 催眠 さいみん hypnosis
  • 睡眠 すいみん sleep
  • 冬眠 とうみん hibernation; winter sleep
  • 不眠 ふみん sleeplessness; insomnia
  • 眠い ねむい sleepy; drowsy
  • 眠気 ねむけ sleepiness; drowsiness
  • 眠り ねむり sleep; sleeping

Related kanji

Same sound component 民
Same radical

Reference

Strokes
10
Kangxi radical
109
Formation type
Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
Grade
Jōyō (secondary school)
Frequency rank
#1315 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 2
Unicode
U+07720