Meaning & readings
beans, pea, midget
On’yomi トウ、ズ
Kun’yomi まめ、まめ-
Nanori ど、ま
Origin
This character appears to be a picture of beans or legumes displayed on a stand or plate. The shape shows a container or shallow dish with small round objects inside, which represents how beans were commonly stored and presented. Over time, the pictorial details simplified into the current form, but the basic image of beans in a vessel remained recognizable enough to carry the meaning "beans" or "pea." The character eventually extended to mean "small" or "midget," likely because beans are tiny objects.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (豆).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 7
- Kangxi radical
- 151
- Formation type
- Pictographic or simple
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1422 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+08C46