Meaning & readings
meal, boiled rice
On’yomi ハン
Kun’yomi めし
Nanori い、いい、いり、え
Origin
The character 飯 combines the food radical on the left, which marks this as something edible, with the component 反 on the right that serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation. The 反 component doesn't mean anything related to rice or meals—it's there primarily to indicate how the character should sound. Together, these parts create a character whose meaning (rice or a meal) comes from the food classifier, while the right side guides you toward the correct pronunciation.
Components
- 飠
- 反
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 184
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 4 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1046 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+098EF