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錦

Brocade

On’yomiきん
Kun’yomiにしき
MeaningsBrocade, Fine Dress, Honors
JLPT N1 16 strokes #1408 most common Secondary school Radical 金 gold
書き順 · Stroke order

How to write 錦

Stroke order is not decoration — it determines how the character looks handwritten and how dictionaries index it.

錦
16 strokes
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Draw it on screen and be marked on stroke order and direction.

分解 · What it is made of

The parts of 錦

Almost every kanji is built from a small set of reusable parts. Learn the parts once and you stop memorising thousands of unrelated shapes.

部首 · Radical

The radical of 錦

金 Radical 167 of 214
Gold

The radical is the part a paper dictionary files a kanji under, and it usually hints at meaning. 錦 is filed under 金 (gold) — radical number 167 of the 214 in the Kangxi system.

Other kanji built on 金

練習 · Practice

Drill 錦 right now

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錦Tap to reveal
Brocade きん にしき
錦
What does it mean?
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熟語 · In real words

Words that use 錦

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.

錦絵 にしきえ nishiki-e; multi-colour woodblock print
錦地 キンチ your place of residence
錦木 ニシキギ winged spindle-tree (Euonymus alatus), burning bush, winged euonymus
錦織 ニシキオリ brocade
錦秋 キンシュー autumn where the foliage is as beautiful as brocade, autumn with beautiful leaves
錦旗 キンキ pennant, gold-brocade flag
錦衣 キンイ fine clothes, beautiful kimono, Japanese brocade; Ajuga yesoensis (species of bugle)
錦蛇 ニシキヘビ python, rock snake
唐錦 カラニシキ Chinese brocade
綾錦 アヤニシキ twill damask and brocade
名乗り · Name readings

How 錦 is read in names

Japanese names use readings that appear nowhere else in the language. These are 錦's — the reason personal and place names are so hard to read even for native speakers.

かねあやにし
同音 · Sound-alikes

Kanji that sound like 錦

Japanese has far more kanji than syllables, so one reading is shared by many characters. These are the ones you will confuse with 錦 — learn them together, not separately.

地名 · In place names

Japanese towns written with 錦

Place names are where kanji readings get strange — and where you meet this character in the wild.

画数 · 16 strokes

Other 16-stroke kanji

Useful when looking a character up by stroke count — and a common source of visual mix-ups.

頻度 · Frequency

Next in the frequency list

錦 is the 1408th most common kanji in written Japanese. Learning in frequency order is the fastest route to reading real text.

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質問 · Questions

About the kanji 錦

What does the kanji 錦 mean?

錦 means Brocade, Fine Dress, Honors. It is the 1408th most common kanji in written Japanese.

How do you read the kanji 錦?

錦 is read on'yomi (Chinese-derived) きん; kun'yomi (native Japanese) にしき.

How many strokes does 錦 have?

錦 is written with 16 strokes. The animated diagram on this page shows the correct order.

What level is the kanji 錦?

It appears at JLPT level N1, and Japanese schoolchildren learn it in secondary school.

What is the radical of 錦?

The radical of 錦 is 金 (gold), radical number 167 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.

What parts is the kanji 錦 made of?

錦 is built from 金 (gold) and 帛 (cloth). Learning kanji as combinations of a few hundred reusable components is far more efficient than memorising each character as a separate shape.

What words use the kanji 錦?

Common words written with 錦 include 錦絵 (にしきえ, nishiki-e; multi-colour woodblock print); 錦地 (キンチ, your place of residence); 錦木 (ニシキギ, winged spindle-tree (Euonymus alatus), burning bush, winged euonymus).

Which kanji sound the same as 錦?

錦 shares a reading with 今 (きん), 金 (きん), 近 (きん), 緊 (きん), 禁 (きん), among others. Same-sounding kanji are one of the most common sources of confusion in Japanese.

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