Meaning & readings

brew, cause

On’yomi ジョウ
Kun’yomi かも.す

Origin

The left side, 酉, is a radical that classifies characters related to alcohol and fermentation—it's a picture of a wine vessel. The right side, 㐮, provides a sound hint for how to pronounce the character. Together, the combination of "alcohol-related" meaning and the sound component gives us a character that means to brew or ferment. The extended meaning of "cause" likely developed because brewing is a process of creating or causing something new to form.

醸 20 strokes

Components

  • 酉 radical left
  • 㐮 sound hint right

A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.

Common words

  • 醸成 じょうせい brewing; fermenting
  • 醸造 じょうぞう brewing

Easily confused with

These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.

Reference

Strokes
20
Kangxi radical
164
Formation type
Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
Grade
Jōyō (secondary school)
Frequency rank
#1838 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 1
Unicode
U+091B8