月
Meaning in Englishmoon, month
Animated kanji stroke order
Related sentences
Word context
What it means
月 (tsuki) means the moon; it denotes the Earth's natural satellite and serves as a basic noun in Japanese for lunar-related concepts and time expressions derived from lunar cycles.
Main meanings
- 1. As a time unit derived from lunar cycles, used in monthly counting and calendar vocabulary (distinct grammatical forms exist for counting and naming months).
- 2. As an element in compound words referring to moonlight, moonlit nights, and lunar phases (vocabulary like moonlight and full moon are formed with this character).
- 3. Poetic and figurative senses: evokes beauty, melancholy, transience, or romance in literature and song.
- 4. Component in proper nouns, place names, and personal names where it adds lunar or temporal nuance.
How to use it
Used both in casual speech to refer to the visible moon and in formal/written contexts as a morpheme in calendar and literary compounds; as a standalone noun it appears in everyday observations and poetic descriptions, while in compounds and as a suffix it participates in month names, counters for months and technical lunar terms—context (spoken vs written, poetic vs administrative) determines pronunciation and formality.
Variants and close terms
- お月さん (otsukisan) — affectionate, colloquial way to refer to the moon.
- 月光 (gekkou) — moonlight (compound).
- 満月 (mangetsu) — full moon (specific lunar phase).
- 朔 (saku) — literary/old term for new moon (rare).
- 太陽 (taiyō) — antonym: the sun.
Composition
The character 月 is originally a pictograph of a crescent moon; in modern kanji it functions as a single semantic unit representing 'moon' and also serves as a common radical in compounds related to time, body parts (in historical forms) and lunar ideas.
Origin
The concept of 月 (tsuki) entered Japanese culture from prehistoric awareness of the lunar cycle and became central with the adoption of lunar calendars; it appears throughout classical literature and court poetry, and seasonal moon-viewing customs such as 月見 (tsukimi) date back to the Heian period and consolidated the moon's cultural prominence.
Word class
noun (名詞)