字 Kanji Decipher

Meaning & readings

flour, powder, dust

On’yomi フン
Kun’yomi デシメートル、こ、こな

Origin

This character combines rice (米) on the left, which signals that the character relates to grain or food products, with the component 分 on the right that provides a sound hint — it tells you roughly how to pronounce the character without contributing to the meaning. The character 分 suggests the sound "fun" or "bun," which matches the on'yomi reading フン. Together, the rice radical and the sound hint create a character that describes what happens to grain when it's ground down: flour or powder.

粉 10 strokes

Components

  • 米 radical left
  • 分 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

  • 花粉 かふん pollen
  • 粉砕 ふんさい pulverization; pulverisation
  • 粉飾 ふんしょく embellishment (e.g. of a story); ornamentation
  • 粉末 ふんまつ fine powder
  • 白粉 おしろい white makeup powder; (face) powder
  • パン粉 パンこ breadcrumbs; panko
  • 花粉症 かふんしょう hay fever; pollinosis (allergy to pollen)
  • 小麦粉 こむぎこ wheat flour

Related kanji

Same sound component 分
Same radical

Reference

Strokes
10
Kangxi radical
119
Formation type
Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
Grade
Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
Frequency rank
#1484 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 2
Unicode
U+07C89