字の旅3,000 years in four forms
Oracle bone · ShangShang · c. 1200 BCE前1.16.6 合23110
Oracle bone: Wikimedia Commons, traced from Academia Sinica, CC0. Bronze and small seal: Academia Sinica 小學堂, CC0. Today’s form: KanjiVG, CC BY-SA 3.0.
部首Radical · in Animals & Wildlife
虫
虫 insect, bug, worm
むし mushi
6 strokesRadical of 11 kanjiPart of 16
Your ink in 虫0% painted · 0 of 11 familiar
Origin · sourced
Pictogram象形
A snake.
Source: Wiktionary, 虫 (rev. 92731919), CC BY-SA 4.0
Memory story · made up to help you remember
“A wriggly creature moves through the grass! The top part is the head, and the body curves below. While it means 'insect' today, it covers a wide world of small wonders—from spiders and butterflies to snakes and frogs. It represents the small but vital lives that hum all around us.”
Where it sits in a kanji
Indicates insects, reptiles, small crawling animals, or transformations (like a caterpillar to a butterfly)
育つ
What it grows into
Built from 虫, with sourced origins
- 虹rainbowコウ · にじ
虫 + 工sound
Phono-semantic compound · Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0
一覧
Every kanji with 虫 as its radical
Most used first
Ink shades, lightest to darkest: 白 Not met, 淡 Met, 中 Learning, 濃 Familiar, 印 Mastered
All 11 kanji