Meaning & readings
chic, style, purity, essence, pith, cream, elite, choice
On’yomi スイ
Kun’yomi いき
Origin
The left component, rice (米), represents refined or essential grain — the most valuable part separated from the husk. The right component is a sound hint that tells you roughly how to pronounce the character. Together, these parts suggest something distilled down to its purest, most elegant form, which is how "粋" came to mean chic style or the essence of something. The idea connects grain refined to its core with refined taste or sophisticated beauty.
Components
- 米
- 卆
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 10
- Kangxi radical
- 119
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1768 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+07C8B