Meaning & readings
cosmetics, adorn (one's person)
On’yomi ショウ
Nanori さ
Origin
This character combines the rice radical 米 on the left, which signals that the character relates to grain or powder-like substances, with 庄 on the right, which serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation. In ancient times, cosmetics were often made from powdered rice and other grain-based materials, so using the rice radical made sense for a character meaning cosmetics or adornment. The 庄 component doesn't contribute to the meaning but tells readers roughly how to pronounce the character.
Components
- 米
- 庄
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 化粧 けしょう make-up; makeup
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 119
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1545 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+07CA7