Meaning & readings

obituary

On’yomi
Kun’yomi しらせ

Origin

This character combines the idea of "words" or "speech" (the left component, which looks like a mouth with lines representing words) with "divination" or "fortune-telling" (the right component, which originally depicted a bone used in divination). Together they suggest an announcement or message of significant importance—specifically news about someone's death. The "divination" element hints at the grave nature of the message, making this character mean "obituary" or "death notice."

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).

9 strokes

Components

  • radical left
  • meaning part right

Reference

Strokes
9
Kangxi radical
149
Grade
Jōyō (secondary school)
Frequency rank
#2379 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
Unicode
U+08A03