Meaning & readings
bird, chicken
On’yomi チョウ
Kun’yomi とり
Nanori か、と、とっ
Origin
This character is a picture of a bird. The top part represents the bird's head and body, while the lower strokes suggest the tail and legs. Over time, the shape became more stylized and squared off to fit the grid-based writing system, but it still captures the basic outline of a bird viewed from the side. Because birds were common in daily life, this visual image naturally became the character for the word "bird" and eventually "chicken" as well.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Pictographic or simple.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (鳥).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 196
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1043 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+09CE5