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. 蝉 is filed under 虫 (insect) — radical number 142 of the 214 in the Kangxi system.
Three quick games built from this character's real data. Your streak is kept in this browser.
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.
Kanji Duel pits 蝉 and 3,000 others head to head. One life. How long can you last?
蝉 means Cicada.
蝉 is read on'yomi (Chinese-derived) せん、ぜん; kun'yomi (native Japanese) せみ.
蝉 is written with 15 strokes. The animated diagram on this page shows the correct order.
The radical of 蝉 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.
蝉 is built from 虫 (insect) and 単 (simple). Learning kanji as combinations of a few hundred reusable components is far more efficient than memorising each character as a separate shape.
Common words written with 蝉 include 川蝉 (カワセミ, kingfisher (esp. the common kingfisher, Alcedo atthis); jade (gem); beautiful lustrous col); 空蝉 (ウツセミ, one's present existence, this mortal frame, this world, this life, temporal things; cast-o); 蝉声 (セミゴエ, cicada singing).
Signed in, we would remember every character you have looked at — and write you reading you can actually get through, built from exactly those.