Meaning & readings
miscellaneous
On’yomi ザツ、ゾウ
Kun’yomi まじ.える、まじ.る
Origin
The character 雑 appears to show rain (the three strokes at the top that represent falling water) mixed with miscellaneous things below. The bottom portion depicts various different elements clustered together — many different strokes and forms combined. This visual composition of rain scattered among many mixed elements came to express the idea of "miscellaneous" or "jumbled together," capturing how things that are varied and disorderly appear when mixed without order, much like rain falling randomly among many different objects.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (雑).
Common words
- 混雑 こんざつ congestion; crush
- 雑音 ざつおん noise (usu. unpleasant)
- 雑貨 ざっか miscellaneous goods; general goods
- 雑居 ざっきょ living together; mixed residence
- 雑巾 ぞうきん house-cloth; dust cloth
- 雑誌 ざっし magazine; journal
- 雑煮 ぞうに soup containing rice cakes and vegetables (New Year's dish)
- 雑炊 ぞうすい rice porridge made by simmering cooked rice in a seasoned broth, often containing vegetables, fish, etc. (usu. made from leftovers)
Reference
- Strokes
- 14
- Kangxi radical
- 172
- Formation type
- Pictographic or simple
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #839 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+096D1