Emaki · all 1,500 words

色々

いろいろ

various, in various ways

Mnemonic

A colour, and the mark saying do that one again, so colours upon colours. The same row いろ as 色, twice over, and he intends to cover all of it: いろいろ.

Worth knowing

々 means repeat the character before it, so this is 色色. It comes back six more times in this deck, in 人々, 我々, 日々, 少々, 元々 and 様々.

Built from

colour
Two figures, one bent over the other, and nobody agrees why that came to mean colour. Take the meaning and leave the shape.
repeat mark
Not a kanji. Typesetters call it ノマ because that is what it looks like, katakana ノ sat on マ. It means repeat the character before it, so 色々 is 色色 and 人々 is 人人. Formally it is a 踊り字, a dancing mark.

Words sharing these kanji

color scenery we (formal) people daily, every day a little, a few originally, by nature various, diverse

This is one of 1,500 words in Emaki, a free spaced repetition trainer with a written mnemonic on every card.

Study 色々 in Emaki

Free, no account needed. Your progress stays in your browser.

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.