Meaning & readings
stone
On’yomi セキ、シャク、コク
Kun’yomi いし
Nanori いさ、いす、いわ、し、せっく、と
Origin
This character is a picture of a stone. The shape shows a large solid form (like a rock or boulder) with a small opening or hollow space inside, which captures how stones appear in nature — solid and heavy but sometimes with cavities or gaps. Over time, the brushstrokes simplified into the five strokes we write today, but the basic idea of representing a hard, compact object remained. Because stones were important materials in ancient life, this simple picture became the standard way to write the word for stone in Japanese and Chinese.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (石).
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 5
- Kangxi radical
- 112
- Formation type
- Pictographic or simple
- Grade
- Grade 1 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #342 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+077F3