Meaning & readings
lend
On’yomi タイ
Kun’yomi か.す、か.し-、かし-
Origin
The character 貸 combines two parts to express the idea of lending. The bottom component 貝, which originally depicted a shell used as currency in ancient China, indicates this character relates to money or goods. The top component 代 serves as a sound hint, suggesting the character's pronunciation without contributing to its meaning. Together, the character depicts the concept of temporarily giving over valuables or money — you're essentially putting goods in someone else's hands for a time, much like how shells once represented portable wealth.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 154
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #995 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+08CB8