字の旅3,000 years in four forms
Oracle bone · ShangShang · c. 1200 BCE甲2319 (商)
Oracle bone, bronze and small seal: Academia Sinica 小學堂, CC0. Today’s form: KanjiVG, CC BY-SA 3.0.
The oracle bone, bronze and seal stages show 齒, not 歯 itself.
部首Radical · in Human Body & People
歯
歯 tooth
は ha
12 strokesRadical of 2 kanjiPart of 1
Your ink in 歯0% painted · 0 of 2 familiar
Origin · sourced
Pictogram象形
A mouth full of teeth. Now phono-semantic compound (形聲) with phonetic 止 added.
Source: Wiktionary, 齒 (rev. 92930173), the entry for the full form, CC BY-SA 4.0
Memory story · made up to help you remember
“Smile wide! This radical is all about the pearly whites in your mouth. Whether it’s the physical act of chewing food, the precision of a gear’s teeth, or the age of a person (which was historically measured by the state of their teeth), "ha" brings a sense of biting, grinding, and sharp, repeatable structure to its characters.”
Where it sits in a kanji
Relates to teeth, biting, chewing, physical age, or mechanical structures with "teeth" (like gears or saws).
育つ
What it grows into
Built from 歯, with sourced origins
一覧
Every kanji with 歯 as its radical
Most used first