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. 蟻 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.
Kanji Duel pits 蟻 and 3,000 others head to head. One life. How long can you last?
蟻 means Ant.
蟻 is read on'yomi (Chinese-derived) ぎ; kun'yomi (native Japanese) あり.
蟻 is written with 19 strokes. The animated diagram on this page shows the correct order.
The radical of 蟻 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.
蟻 is built from 虫 (insect) and 義 (righteousness). 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 蟻 include 山蟻 (ヤマアリ, wood ant (any ant of genus Formica)); 蟻食 (アリクイ, anteater); 白蟻 (シロアリ, termite, white ant).
Signed in, we would remember every character you have looked at — and write you reading you can actually get through, built from exactly those.