• pregnancy, conception;

Etymology

Formed as a phono-semantic compound:

女 (woman, female) provides the semantic component.

壬 (the Heavenly Stem 임, “north/ren”) provides the phonetic element.

Thus the character conveys the idea of a woman bearing life.

An alternate form 姙 replaces 壬 with 任 (“to entrust”), but the meaning remains the same.

Usage in Korean

임신 (妊娠) — pregnancy

산모 (妊婦) — pregnant woman

Alternative forms

아이밸
aibael
im
Kangxi radical:38, + 4
Strokes:7
Unicode:U+598A
Cangjie input:
  • 女竹土 (VHG)
Composition:
  • ⿰ 女 壬

Characters next to each other in the list

References