Meaning & readings

decorate, ornament, adorn, embellish

On’yomi ショク
Kun’yomi かざ.る、かざ.り
Nanori しか

Origin

This character appears to combine the idea of adornment with movement or action. The left side contains a component related to wings or feathers, which evokes the image of birds displaying their plumage to make themselves look attractive. The right side suggests action or doing something. Together, the character captures the visual essence of making oneself or something else beautiful by adding decorative elements, much like how a bird adorns itself with its feathers. Over time, this concrete image of feathered ornamentation broadened to mean decoration and embellishment in general.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Pictographic or simple.

13 strokes

Components

This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (飾).

  • meaning part

Common words

  • 飾り かざり decoration; ornament
  • 飾る かざる to decorate; to ornament
  • 装飾 そうしょく ornament; decoration
  • 服飾 ふくしょく clothing and accessories; attire
  • 粉飾 ふんしょく embellishment (e.g. of a story); ornamentation
  • 宝飾 ほうしょく jewels and ornaments; jewelry
  • 首飾り くびかざり necklace; choker
  • 飾り気 かざりけ affectation; showiness

Reference

Strokes
13
Kangxi radical
184
Grade
Jōyō (secondary school)
Frequency rank
#1193 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 1
Unicode
U+098FE