妹

See also: 妺

Translingual

Etymology

Phono-semantic compound (形聲): semantic 女 (“female, woman”) + phonetic 未.

Han character

妹 (radical 38 女+5, 8 strokes, cangjie input 女十木 (VJD), four-corner 4549₀, composition ⿰女未)

1. younger sister

References

• KangXi: page 257, character 28
• Dai Kanwa Jiten: character 6138
• Dae Jaweon: page 522, character 23
• Hanyu Da Zidian: volume 2, page 1034, character 6
• Unihan data for U+59B9

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Cantonese

Hanzi

妹 (Jyutping mui6, Yale mui6)

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Japanese

Kanji

妹

(grade 2 “Kyōiku” kanji)

Readings

• On: まい (mai)
• Kun: いもうと (imouto), いも (imo)

Etymology 1

/imo1/ → /imo/. The medial /m/ means "woman, female" and is found in a number of related terms: me, onna, megami, omina, omo etc.

Noun

妹 (hiragana いも, romaji imo)

1. a close female companion; a sister or wife

Derived terms

• 妹 (imōto)

Etymology 2

/imo1/ + hi1to2/ (“person”): /imopitə/ → /imoɸito/ → /imowito/ → /imouto/ → /imoːto/.

Noun

妹 (hiragana いもうと, romaji imōto)

1. one's own younger sister
2. a younger female

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Korean

Hanja

妹 (mae) (hangeul 매, revised mae, McCune-Reischauer mae)

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Mandarin

Hanzi

妹 (Pinyin mèi (mei4), Wade-Giles mei⁴)

Compounds

• 妹子

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Vietnamese

Han character

妹 (muội)