Meaning & readings
verification, effect, testing
Origin
The character 験 combines a horse (馬) on the left with a component that sounds like "ken" on the right. The horse here acts as a classifier suggesting the domain of testing or verification — horses were often used for practical trials and tests in ancient times. The right component provides the sound hint for how to pronounce the character. Over time, the meaning shifted from the concrete idea of testing horses to the broader sense of verification, effect, and experimentation that the character carries today.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 馬
- 㑒
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 経験 けいけん experience
- 試験 しけん examination; exam
- 実験 じっけん experiment; experimentation
- 受験 じゅけん taking an examination (esp. for entrance to a school or university)
- 体験 たいけん (practical) experience; personal experience
- 治験 ちけん clinical trial
- 核実験 かくじっけん nuclear (bomb) test
- 経験者 けいけんしゃ experienced person; person who has had a particular experience
Reference
- Strokes
- 18
- Kangxi radical
- 187
- Grade
- Grade 4 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #410 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+09A13