Meaning & readings
small bell, buzzer
On’yomi レイ、リン
Kun’yomi すず
Nanori ず
Origin
The character 鈴 combines the metal radical 金 on the left, which marks it as something made of metal, with 令 on the right, which serves as a sound hint suggesting the pronunciation. Since bells are metal objects that make ringing sounds, the metal component perfectly captures what a bell is made from. The 令 component doesn't contribute to the meaning but helps speakers remember how to pronounce the character, much like how a rhyming word can help you remember a phone number.
Common words
- 風鈴 ふうりん wind chime; wind bell
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 167
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #880 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+09234