Meaning & readings
discriminating, know, write
Origin
The character 識 combines the radical 言, which means words or speech, on the left side with a sound hint component 戠 on the right that suggests the pronunciation シキ. The concept builds from the idea that knowledge and discrimination involve the use of language — speaking, writing, and articulating distinctions between things. Over time, the character came to mean "to know" or "to recognize," since these acts are fundamentally connected to our ability to name and discuss what we perceive. The sound component helps speakers remember how to pronounce the character without changing the basic meaning rooted in the speech radical.
Components
- 言
- 戠
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 19
- Kangxi radical
- 149
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #496 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+08B58