Meaning & readings
beauty, beautiful
On’yomi ビ、ミ
Kun’yomi うつく.しい
Nanori はる、よし、よしみ、り
Origin
This character combines a picture of a sheep (the top component) with the character for "big" or "great" underneath. In ancient China, a large sheep was considered valuable and desirable, so the image of a big sheep came to represent something excellent or beautiful. Over time, the character's meaning shifted from the literal idea of a fine animal to the broader concept of beauty itself.
Components
- ⺷
- 大
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 123
- Formation type
- Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #462 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+07F8E