Meaning & readings
company, firm, office, association, shrine
Origin
This character combines a religious or shrine-related element on the left with a sound hint on the right. The left component (礻) is a simplified form of a character meaning shrine or altar, which captures the original meaning of 社 as a Shinto shrine or place of worship. The right component (土, meaning earth) provides a rough sound hint for how to pronounce the character. Over time, 社 expanded beyond shrines to mean any organized group or association, and eventually modern Japanese used it to mean company or firm — places where people gather together, much like the original shrine gathering.
Components
- 礻
- 土
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 7
- Kangxi radical
- 113
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #21 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 4
- Unicode
- U+0793E