Stroke order is not decoration — it determines how the character looks handwritten and how dictionaries index it.
Almost every kanji is built from a small set of reusable parts. Learn the parts once and you stop memorising thousands of unrelated shapes.
The radical is the part a paper dictionary files a kanji under, and it usually hints at meaning. 蛍 is filed under 虫 (insect) — radical number 142 of the 214 in the Kangxi system.
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Kanji are almost never met alone. These are the most common words built from this character, ordered by how often they actually appear in Japanese.
Japanese has far more kanji than syllables, so one reading is shared by many characters. These are the ones you will confuse with 蛍 — learn them together, not separately.
Useful when looking a character up by stroke count — and a common source of visual mix-ups.
蛍 is the 1973rd most common kanji in written Japanese. Learning in frequency order is the fastest route to reading real text.
Kanji Duel pits 蛍 and 3,000 others head to head. One life. How long can you last?
蛍 means Lightning-bug, Firefly. It is the 1973rd most common kanji in written Japanese.
蛍 is read on'yomi (Chinese-derived) けい; kun'yomi (native Japanese) ほたる.
蛍 is written with 11 strokes. The animated diagram on this page shows the correct order.
It appears at JLPT level N1, and Japanese schoolchildren learn it in secondary school.
The radical of 蛍 is 虫 (insect), radical number 142 of the 214 Kangxi radicals. The radical is the component a dictionary files the character under, and it usually points at the character's meaning.
蛍 contains 𤇾V as its phonetic component — the part that carries the sound rather than the meaning, which is why 蛍 is read けい. Roughly two-thirds of all kanji are built this way, so spotting the phonetic component often lets you guess the reading of a character you have never seen.
Common words written with 蛍 include 蛍光灯 (けいこうとう, fluorescent lamp; fluorescent light; person who is slow to react); 蛍光燈 (けいこうとう, fluorescent lamp; fluorescent light; person who is slow to react); 蛍光 (けいこう, fluorescence).
蛍 shares a reading with 京 (けい), 経 (けい), 計 (けい), 係 (けい), 境 (けい), among others. Same-sounding kanji are one of the most common sources of confusion in Japanese.
Signed in, we would remember every character you have looked at — and write you reading you can actually get through, built from exactly those.