美 Beautiful


９画　羊部　【三年】
【音読み】　ビ／ミ
【訓読み】　うつく・しい／よい／うまい
【関連字】　み／羊／大



Reading & Writing



Note how stroke four goes down and not, as may be expected, across as it does with the kanji it is based on 羊. I had been writing the down stroke at point six for a very long time before I realised my mistake.

美 is a combination of 大 and 羊; literally 'big sheep'. The actual meaning is slightly more subtle, representing the delicate beauty of a well proportioned sheep. Depending on your feeling towards farm animals, you may find this all rather strange until you think about how important an animal that can be used for both food and clothing must have been in China when this character was created. With 美 also meaning delicious, i.e. beautiful taste, it perhaps makes a little more sense.

There are some characters containing 羊 that have a negative slant, but on the whole the high esteem in which sheep were held is clearly demonstrated in a large number of kanji. As an example: 儀-ceremony; 義-righteousness; 祥-auspicious; 鮮-fresh; 善-virtuous; 養-nurture.

As long as you remember 美 means beautiful then remembering the primary Chinese reading is simple. The 'be' in beautiful gives you the ビ in Japanese. Realising that the kana character み evolved from 美 gives you the secondary reading, which is used fairly commonly for girls names. You can also ask yourself the question "Who is beautiful? Well, me of course!", if you're not adverse to a little narcissism.

Watch out for the irregular writing of delicious; 美味しい and 美味い, read as おいしい and うまい respectively. They tend to crop up quite a lot on Japanese TV.

Vocabulary
All the following words are marked priority in EDICT, but the ones in bold correspond to the Japanese Proficiency Test listing:

  • 美しい 【うつくしい】 (adj) beautiful, lovely
  • 美味しい 【おいしい】 (adj) delicious, tasty
  • 賛美（する）【さんび】 praise, adoration, glorification
  • 美 【び】 beauty
  • 美術 【びじゅつ】 art, fine arts
  • 美術館 【びじゅつかん】 art gallery, art museum
  • 美人 【びじん】 beautiful woman
  • 美容 【びよう】 beauty of figure or form
  • 褒美 【ほうび】reward, prize
  • 優美 【ゆうび】 (adj-na,n) grace, refinement, elegance
  • 美容院 【びよういん】 beauty parlour, beauty parlor, hairdressing salon
  • 美容師 【びようし】 beauty artist
  • 華美 【かび】 (adj-na,n) pomp, splendor, splendour, gaudiness
  • 甘美 【かんび】 (adj-na,n) sweet
  • 美化（する）【びか】beautification, glorification
  • 美意識 【びいしき】 sense of beauty, aesthetic sense
  • 美学 【びがく】 esthetics, aesthetics
  • 美辞麗句 【びじれいく】 flowery words, rhetorical flourishes
  • 美術展 【びじゅつてん】 art exhibition
  • 美女 【びじょ】 beautiful woman
  • 美点 【びてん】 virtue, charm, merit, good point

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