Meaning & readings

frost

On’yomi ソウ
Kun’yomi しも

Origin

Frost is a weather phenomenon, so the character uses 雨, the radical for rain or water in the sky, at the top to show it's something that happens in the atmosphere. The bottom component 相 serves as a sound hint, roughly indicating how the character should be pronounced. Together, these parts create a character that represents frost: frozen water that forms in cold air, shown through the "rain" element combined with a phonetic guide.

霜 17 strokes

Components

  • 雨 radical top
  • 相 sound hint bottom

A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.

Common words

  • 霜降り しもふり speckled with white; salt-and-pepper (pattern, fabric, etc.)

Reference

Strokes
17
Kangxi radical
173
Formation type
Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
Grade
Jōyō (secondary school)
Frequency rank
#2151 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 1
Unicode
U+0971C