Meaning & readings
long, leader, superior, senior
Origin
This character appears to picture a long-haired person, with the upper strokes representing the head and the lower strokes representing long hair flowing down. The visual idea of length—suggested by hair extending far below the head—became the character's primary meaning of "long" or "extended." From this basic sense of length and prominence, the meaning expanded to include "leader" or "superior," since someone who stands out or extends beyond others might be seen as prominent or in charge.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Pictographic or simple.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (長).
Common words
- 医長 いちょう medical director; chief physician
- 院長 いんちょう director (of a hospital, institution, academy, etc.); superintendent
- 駅長 えきちょう station master
- 園長 えんちょう head of a garden; kindergarten principal
- 延長 えんちょう extension; elongation
- 課長 かちょう section manager; section chief
- 会長 かいちょう president (of a society); chairman
- 学長 がくちょう (university) president; chancellor
Reference
- Strokes
- 8
- Kangxi radical
- 168
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #12 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 4
- Unicode
- U+09577