Meaning & readings
bud, sprout, spear, germ
On’yomi ガ
Kun’yomi め
Nanori じ、めぐ
Origin
The character 芽 combines a grass radical at the top, showing that this word relates to plants, with the component 牙 at the bottom. The 牙 component serves as a sound hint, suggesting how the character should be pronounced. Together, these parts build the idea of something small and plant-like pushing up from the ground — a sprout or bud. The grass radical makes clear we are talking about plants specifically, while the overall shape suggests the tender, pointed form of new growth emerging from soil.
Components
- 艹
- 牙
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 8
- Kangxi radical
- 140
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 4 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1691 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+082BD