Meaning & readings

inspection, regard as, see, look at

On’yomi
Kun’yomi み.る
Nanori とも、み

Origin

The character combines two components to express the idea of looking and seeing. The right side, , is a picture of an eye and directly represents the act of seeing or looking. The left side, 礻, serves as a sound hint that guides pronunciation rather than adding to the meaning. Together, these parts created a character that means to inspect, regard, or look at something, with the visual element of the eye making the core meaning immediately clear.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).

11 strokes

Components

  • sound hint left
  • radical right

A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.

Common words

  • 監視 かんし monitoring; watching
  • 凝視 ぎょうし stare; gaze
  • 近視 きんし myopia; shortsightedness
  • 警視 けいし police superintendent
  • 軽視 けいし making light of; thinking little of
  • 視界 しかい field of vision; visibility
  • 視覚 しかく (sense of) sight; eyesight
  • 視察 しさつ inspection; observation

Reference

Strokes
11
Kangxi radical
147
Grade
Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
Frequency rank
#362 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 1
Unicode
U+08996