Meaning & readings
ought, by all means, necessarily
On’yomi ス、シュ
Kun’yomi すべから.く、すべし、ひげ、まつ、もち.いる、もと.める
Nanori もとむ、ぞ
Origin
This character combines two components to suggest obligation or necessity. The right side, 頁, depicts a head or face—representing a person. The left side, 彡, shows three lines suggesting hair or whiskers, emphasizing the human form. Together, these create an image of a person as they inherently or naturally are, which evolved to mean something that is essential or necessarily required of that person. The character thus visually conveys the idea of something one ought to do by nature or necessity.
Components
- 彡
- 頁
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 181
- Formation type
- Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1339 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+09808