Meaning & readings
everywhere, times, widely, generally
On’yomi ヘン
Kun’yomi あまね.く
Origin
The character 遍 combines a path or movement radical on the left, which indicates the general domain of travel or going, with the component 扁 on the right, which serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation "hen." The idea of movement spreading out in all directions gradually developed into the meaning of something occurring everywhere or happening repeatedly in different places. Over time, this extended to the broader sense of something being widespread or general across all instances or situations.
Components
- 扁
- ⻌
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
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 162
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1845 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+0904D