Meaning & readings
token, sign, mark, tally, charm
On’yomi フ
Origin
The kanji 符 combines the bamboo radical at the top with a sound hint at the bottom. Bamboo was traditionally used to make tallies and tokens—thin slips that could be marked or split to verify agreements or identify people. The bottom component 付 doesn't contribute its meaning but roughly indicates how the character is pronounced. Together, the bamboo component evokes the physical object of a bamboo tally, while the sound hint anchors the pronunciation, creating a character that represents any kind of token, sign, or identifying mark.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 118
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1798 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+07B26