Meaning & readings
germ, fungus, bacteria
On’yomi キン
Origin
The character combines the grass radical at the top, which classifies the character as referring to plants or plant-like organisms, with the sound component at the bottom that suggests the pronunciation kin. The bottom component acts purely as a phonetic hint and doesn't contribute to the meaning. Together, the character depicts the concept of microscopic plant-like growths—fungi and bacteria—that exist in the natural world. Over time, this character came to refer broadly to germs and microorganisms.
Components
- 艹
- 囷
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 140
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1586 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+083CC