Meaning & readings
bosom, breast, chest, heart, feelings
On’yomi キョウ
Kun’yomi むね、むな-
Origin
The character 胸 combines the flesh radical 月 on the left, which marks it as a body part, with 匈 on the right, which serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation. The 月 component narrows the meaning down to something physical and anatomical, while 匈 tells readers roughly how to say the character. Together they create a character that refers to the chest and breast area of the body, and by extension the seat of emotions and feelings that are thought to reside there.
Components
- 月
- 匈
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
- 130
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1144 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+080F8