Meaning & readings
intelligent, wise, wisdom, cleverness
On’yomi ケン
Kun’yomi かしこ.い
Nanori かた、さか、さと、さとし、たか、たて、のり、まこと、まさ、まさる
Origin
The character 賢 combines a sound hint at the top with the radical for "treasure" or "value" at the bottom. The 貝 component originally depicted a cowrie shell, which was precious and used as currency in ancient China, making it a natural symbol for valuable things. By pairing this "valuable" radical with a sound component, the character came to mean something intellectually valuable—wisdom and intelligence. Over time, the specific visual form stabilized into the 16-stroke character we see today.
Components
- 臤
- 貝
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 16
- Kangxi radical
- 154
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1159 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+08CE2