Onyomi: レイ · Kunyomi: さ.ます, さ.める, つめ.たい, ひ.える, ひ.や, ひ.やかす, ひ.やす, ひ.ややか · Meanings: chill, cold (beer, person), cool
Kanji for chill, cold beer person, cool
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Find visually similar kanji, commonly confused characters, related meanings, and useful words connected to 冷.
The kanji 冷 is formed from two parts: the ice radical 冫 on the left and the character 令 on the right. The ice radical clearly gives the feeling of coldness or something chilled. The right component, 令, originally showed a person kneeling and receiving an instruction or command inside a building. When these two elements were combined long ago, the image suggested “a command in the cold,” or “a person in a chilly place,” capturing the sharp, crisp feeling of cold air. Over time this combination came to represent the idea of coldness — the sensation of being cooled, chilled, or feeling a sudden drop in temperature.
冷 joins the ice radical 冫 with 令, giving the image of a person in a cold, sharp atmosphere — expressing the feeling of being chilled or cold.
Picture icy air (冫) hitting a person who’s standing at attention (令), making them shiver instantly. That sudden chill is 冷 — cold.
| Word | Reading | Meaning | Meta |
|---|---|---|---|
| 冷や | ひや | cold water | Noun |
| 冷 | れい | refrigerator | Noun |
| 冷蔵庫 | れいぞうこ | refrigerator, fridge | common JLPT-N5 Noun |
| 冷たい | つめたい | cold (to the touch), chilly, icy, freezing | common JLPT-N5 I-adjective (keiyoushi) |
| 冷える | ひえる | to grow cold, to get chilly, to cool down | common JLPT-N4 Ichidan verb, Intransitive verb |
| 冷房 | れいぼう | air conditioning, air cooling | common JLPT-N4 Noun, Suru verb, Transitive verb |
| 冷静 | れいせい | calmness, composure, coolness, serenity, presence of mind | common JLPT-N3 Noun, Na-adjective (keiyodoshi) |
| 冷やす | ひやす | to cool, to chill, to refrigerate | common JLPT-N2 Godan verb with 'su' ending, Transitive verb |
| 冷凍 | れいとう | freezing, cold storage, refrigeration | common JLPT-N2 Noun, Suru verb, Transitive verb |
| 冷める | さめる | to cool down, to get cold | common JLPT-N2 Ichidan verb, Intransitive verb |