Emaki · all 1,500 words

大変

たいへん

terrible, serious, grave

Mnemonic

Whatever has happened, it is not small. Somebody has tied たい a hen へん to it as well, and now there are two problems: たいへん.

Worth knowing

Also does duty as 'very' in front of an adjective: 大変おいしい is very tasty. Same 変 as 変 へん.

Built from

big
A person stood with both arms flung wide.
change
A simplified form: one thing turning into another.

Words sharing these kanji

love big, large big, large alright, OK important, precious important, valuable huge, gigantic adult large quantity, great volume mostly biggest, largest very, greatly

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Emaki is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Kaishi 1.5k or its authors. The word, reading and meaning come from the Kaishi 1.5k deck, used with their permission. The mnemonic, the note and the kanji breakdown are original work, published under CC BY-SA 4.0.