Meaning & readings

rice plant

On’yomi トウ、テ
Kun’yomi いね、いな-
Nanori いの、しね、せ、な

Origin

The character combines the left component 禾, which is a picture of grain stalks and classifies this character as being about cereal crops. On the right is a sound hint component that suggests how the character should be pronounced, roughly like "tou" or "te." Together, this phono-semantic combination — a meaning classifier plus a pronunciation guide — creates a character that specifically refers to the rice plant, one of the most important grain crops in East Asian agriculture.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).

14 strokes

Components

  • radical left
  • right 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

  • 稲妻 いなずま lightning; flash of lightning
  • 稲作 いなさく rice cultivation; rice crop
  • 稲穂 いなほ ear (head) of rice
  • 水稲 すいとう wet-land rice
  • 稲荷 いなり Inari (god of harvests, Uka-no-Mitama)
  • 稲田 いなだ paddy field; rice field
  • 稲刈り いねかり rice reaping; rice harvesting

Reference

Strokes
14
Kangxi radical
115
Grade
Jōyō (secondary school)
Frequency rank
#1038 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 1
Unicode
U+07A32