Meaning & readings
metropolis, capital, all, everything
On’yomi ト、ツ
Kun’yomi みやこ
Nanori くに、ず、ち、づめ、みや
Origin
The character 都 combines two parts to indicate a place of importance. The right component, a radical related to cities or places, provides the general category of meaning. The left component 者, which means "person," serves as a sound hint telling you how to pronounce the character — it's not meant to describe what a capital city is. Together, these components create a character for a major city or capital, the kind of place where important people gather and rule from.
Components
- 者
- ⻏
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
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 163
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #123 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+090FD