Meaning & readings
drink, smoke, take
Origin
This character combines two parts: on the left is the "food" radical, which classifies this as a character about eating and drinking. On the right is the component 欠, which acts as a sound hint suggesting the character's pronunciation. The character's meaning of "to drink" or "to take" developed from the basic concept of consuming something, whether liquid or solid, which fits naturally with the food classifier. Over time, the character also took on the meaning of "smoke," since smoking involves inhaling something similar to how drinking involves consuming a liquid.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 飠
- 欠
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
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #969 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 4
- Unicode
- U+098F2