Kanji Kaisen

漢字Kanji · in Time & Sequence

五: five

JLPT N54 strokesGrade 1Your ink: 白 Not met
4 strokes
  • Oracle bone · Shang
  • Today

Oracle bone: Wikimedia Commons, traced from Academia Sinica, CC0. Today’s form: KanjiVG, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Three readings, and the words that use each

ゴgo · on'yomi · in compounds

  • 五月ごがつMay
  • 五時間ごじかん5 hours
  • 五階ごかい5th floor
  • 五人ごにん5 people

いつitsu · kun'yomi · on its own

  • 五日いつか5 days, 5th of the month

いつつitsutsu · kun'yomi

  • 五ついつつ5 (objects)

Words: Kanji alive, CC BY 4.0.

成り立ち

Where it comes from

Origin · sourced

Pictogram (象形)

Originally written 𠄡, consisting of 㐅 with a bar on the top and bottom. Original meaning is unclear.

Source: Wiktionary, 五 (rev. 93697391), CC BY-SA 4.0

Memory story · made up to help you remember

“Two (二) + an intersecting X. Originally represented five through the intersection of the "heaven" and "earth" lines, showing the number five as a central pivot point.”
繋がり
Ink shades, lightest to darkest: 白 Not met, 淡 Met, 中 Learning, 濃 Familiar, 印 Mastered
In ChineseSame character in simplified and traditional · wǔ

Same form: 五 is written the same way in mainland China (simplified) and in Taiwan and Hong Kong (traditional).

Simplified
五 mainland China, Singapore
Traditional
五 Taiwan, Hong Kong

Pinyin wǔ most common reading

Forms and pinyin: Unicode Unihan database (Unicode License v3). Pinyin lists the most common reading, not every reading.

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