Meaning & readings
electricity
On’yomi デン
Origin
The kanji 電 combines two parts to represent electricity. The top component 雨 means rain or water falling from the sky, which serves as a category marker suggesting a natural phenomenon that falls or moves through the air. The bottom component 申 acts as a sound hint, telling you roughly how to pronounce the character. Together, the character evolved to represent electricity—a natural force like lightning that appears in the sky during storms, fitting under the "rain/sky" category while the sound component helped speakers remember the pronunciation デン.
Common words
- 家電 かでん household (electrical) appliances; home appliances
- 外電 がいでん foreign telegram
- 終電 しゅうでん last train (of the day)
- 充電 じゅうでん charging (electrically)
- 祝電 しゅくでん congratulatory telegram
- 送電 そうでん transmission of electricity; electricity supply
- 弔電 ちょうでん telegram of condolence
- 停電 ていでん power outage; power failure
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 173
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #268 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 4
- Unicode
- U+096FB