Meaning & readings
gods, mind, soul
Origin
This character combines a symbol for shrines and the sacred (the left component, which classifies religious or spiritual matters) with a sound hint on the right that suggests the pronunciation shin or jin. The right component originally depicted a person stretching or extending upward, which may evoke the idea of reaching toward heaven or the divine, making it a fitting pairing with the shrine symbol. Over time, the combination came to mean gods, spirits, and the unseen forces behind consciousness and the mind. The left radical acts as a category marker showing this character belongs to the world of religious and spiritual concepts.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 礻
- 申
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 神輿 みこし mikoshi; portable Shinto shrine carried through the streets during festivals
- 阪神 はんしん Osaka-Kobe
- 氏神 うじがみ patron god; tutelar deity
- 女神 めがみ goddess
- 神学 しんがく theology; divinity
- 神楽 かぐら kagura; traditional Shinto music and dancing
- 神官 しんかん (Shinto) priest
- 神宮 じんぐう high-status Shinto shrine with connection to imperial family; imperial Shinto shrine
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 113
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #347 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+0795E