美

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See also: 菐 and 実

Template:character info/new

Translingual

Stroke order (Japan)
9 strokes
Stroke order

Han character

美 (Kangxi radical 123, 羊+3, 9 strokes, cangjie input 廿土大 (TGK), four-corner 80431, composition ⿱𦍌大)

Descendants

References

  • Kangxi Dictionary: page 951, character 10
  • Dai Kanwa Jiten: character 28435
  • Dae Jaweon: page 1393, character 17
  • Hanyu Da Zidian (first edition): volume 5, page 3126, character 5
  • Unihan data for U+7F8E

Chinese

trad. 美
simp. # 美
alternative forms 媄
羙

Glyph origin

Historical forms of the character 美
Shang Western Zhou
Oracle bone script Bronze inscriptions
Characters in the same phonetic series (美) (Zhengzhang, 2003) 
Old Chinese
美 *mriʔ
渼 *mriʔ
媄 *mriʔ

Pictogram (象形) : 羊 (“goat, sheep or feathers”) + 大 (“person”) – a person with a headdress of feathers or ram's horn; sometimes considered as an ideogrammic compound (會意).

Etymology

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *mway (“beautiful, well, perfectly”) (STEDT).

According to Schuessler (2007), cognate with Mizo mawi (“beautiful, lovely”), Jingpho moi (“perfectly, beautifully”) as well as Karbi me- (“be good”) and Jingpho cha mai (“good”); the former two items from *moy "beautiful" and the latter from *may "good, well", which were two roots reconstructed separately by Benedict (1972).

Pronunciation

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Definitions

(deprecated template usage) 美

  1. beautiful; pretty; attractive; good-looking
    美人  ―  měirén  ―  beautiful woman
  2. delicious; tasty; flavoursome
    美食  ―  měishí  ―  culinary delicacy
  3. good; fine; satisfactory; happy
  4. to beautify; to prettify
    美容  ―  měiróng  ―  to improve one's appearance
  5. to praise; to commend
  6. (colloquial) to be pleased with oneself
    他不就是得了個一百分兒嗎？看把他美得！ [dialectal Mandarin, trad.]
    他不就是得了个一百分儿吗？看把他美得！ [dialectal Mandarin, simp.]
    Tā bù jiù shi dé le ge yī bǎi fēnr ma? Kàn bǎ tā měi de! [Pinyin]
    (please add an English translation of this usage example)
  7. beautiful things; beauty
  8. Short for 美洲 (Měizhōu, “America (continent)”).
  9. Short for 美國／美国 (Měiguó, “United States of America”).
  10. a surname Mei

Compounds

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Further reading

(deprecated template usage)

Japanese

Kanji

美

(Third grade kyōiku kanji)

  1. beauty; beautiful

Readings

Compounds

Derived terms

Etymology 1

Affix

美(び) • (bi) 

  1. beauty; beautiful

Noun

美(び) • (bi) 

  1. beauty
    自然(しぜん)の美(び)
    shizen no bi
    beauty of nature; natural beauty

Etymology 2

Affix

美(み) • (mi) 

  1. beauty; beautiful

Suffix

美(み) • (-mi) 

  1. suffix used by female given names, such as 奈美(なみ, Nami), 恵美(えみ, Emi; めぐみ, Megumi), 宏美(ひろみ, Hiromi)
  2. (rare) suffix used by male given names

Korean

Hanja

美 • (mi) (hangeul 미, McCune–Reischauer mi, Yale mi)

  1. the USA, the Americas (in compounds, in news media)
  2. beautiful

Compounds

Derived terms

Vietnamese

Han character

美: Hán Việt readings: mỹ[1][2], mĩ[3]
美: Nôm readings: mẻ[2][3][4], mẹ[1][2], mỹ[1][2], mẽ[1][4], mỉa[1][4], mở[1], mỉ[3], mĩ[4]

  1. chữ Hán form of mĩ/mỹ (“beautiful; pretty; good”).

Compounds

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Nguyễn (2014).
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Nguyễn et al. (2009).
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Trần (2004).
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Taberd & Pigneau de Béhaine (1838).
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