Meaning & readings
signature, govt office, police station
Origin
The character 署 combines a container or enclosure symbol at the top with 者, which sounds like "sha" and serves as a sound hint for pronunciation. The enclosed area suggests an official space or building—hence the association with government offices and police stations. Over time, this sense of an official administrative space extended to the idea of a signature or official mark, since both represent formal, authoritative acts. The sound component helped speakers remember how to say the word while the visual elements conveyed its meaning of officialdom.
Components
- 罒
- 者
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 122
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #725 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+07F72