Meaning & readings
medicine, chemical, enamel, gunpowder, benefit
On’yomi ヤク
Kun’yomi くすり
Nanori み
Origin
The character 薬 combines a "grass" radical at the top — showing that this character relates to plants — with the component 楽 (which sounds like "yaku") at the bottom. The 楽 part acts as a sound hint, telling you roughly how to pronounce the character, while the grass radical indicates that the word refers to plant-based substances. Together, this made sense for a character meaning medicine, since many traditional medicines were made from plants and herbs.
Components
- 艹
- 楽
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 16
- Kangxi radical
- 140
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #702 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+085AC