Meaning & readings
exploits, achievements, unreeling cocoons
Origin
This character combines the thread radical 糸 on the left with 責 on the right, which serves as a sound hint for how to pronounce it. The thread component refers to silk or fiber work, particularly the process of unreeling cocoons to produce usable thread—a labor-intensive craft in ancient East Asia. The right side 責 helps signal the character's pronunciation without contributing to the meaning. Over time, the character's meaning expanded from the concrete work of silk production to the more abstract sense of achievements and accomplishments, possibly because such skilled work represented valuable results or because productive labor came to symbolize success more broadly.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 17
- Kangxi radical
- 120
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #820 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+07E3E