Origin

This character combines two elements to represent a key. The left part, 金 (gold/metal), indicates that a key is made of metal. The right part, 建, provides a sound hint for how to pronounce the character — it suggests roughly how it should be spoken. Together, the metal radical paired with this phonetic component created the character for a metal object used to unlock things, which is what we call a key.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).