字の旅3,000 years in four forms
Oracle bone · ShangShang · c. 1200 BCE林1.9.6
Oracle bone and bronze: Wikimedia Commons, traced from Academia Sinica, CC0. Small seal: Academia Sinica 小學堂, CC0. Today’s form: KanjiVG, CC BY-SA 3.0.
部首Radical · in States & Attributes
大 large, big
だい dai
3 strokesRadical of 17 kanjiPart of 22
Origin · sourced
Pictogram象形
A standing person facing forward.
Source: Wiktionary, 大 (rev. 94592373), CC BY-SA 4.0
Memory story · made up to help you remember
“Stretch out wide! This radical represents anything that is grand, important, or massive in scale. When you see it, think of a person making themselves huge to show exactly how big something is. It brings a sense of power, great size, and major importance to its characters, reminding us of the human scale against which all things are measured.”
Where it sits in a kanji
Indicates size and scale (large, great), importance (major, master), physical expanse (wide), or the concept of something reaching its full potential.
What it grows into
- 夫husbandフ · おっと
大 becomes 夫
A variant form of 大 preserving its original meaning of 夫 (“man”). 大 and 夫 were originally used interchangeably before settling to their current meanings.
Pictogram · Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0
- 天heavensテン · あまつ
- 太plumpタイ · ふとい
大 becomes 太
A differentiated form of 大 (“big; great”) with a 丶 added to represent 太 (“too big”).
Phono-semantic compound · Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0
Every kanji with 大 as its radical
All 17 kanji