Meaning & readings
spicy, bitter, hot, acrid
Origin
This character combines the image of a person standing upright (立) with a cross or mark (十) beneath them. The cross is thought to represent suffering or hardship, so the full picture shows a person marked or troubled by difficulty. Over time, this visual idea expanded to include the sharp, uncomfortable sensation of spicy or bitter food—the kind of sensation that makes you wince, just as hardship troubles a person. The character's meanings of spicy, bitter, and acrid all capture that sense of something harsh or unpleasant striking the senses.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 7
- Kangxi radical
- 160
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1607 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+08F9B