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When I check 女子on google I have found two contrasting definitions:

There is : https://jisho.org/search/%23kanji%20%E5%A5%BD

Which states that the meanings are "fond, pleasing, like something"

But there is also: https://teamjapanese.com/girl-in-japanese/

Which states that one of the ways for saying "girl" is Joshi which uses the kanji 女子

Are the uses cases depending on context?

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    好 (one character) is a different word from 女子 (two characters).
    – Jimmy
    Apr 3 at 17:05

1 Answer 1

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好 and 女子 are two different words. 好 is a single character and is commonly read as 好{す}き, 好{この}む, or 好{こう}物. The meaning, as you've defined, is "fond, pleasing, like something".

女子 are two separate characters 女 and 子, and since 女 means female or woman and 子 means child, 女子 means a young girl and is read as 女{じょ}子{し}

Yes the character 好 is made from the characters 女 and 子, depicting a woman/mother 女 being very fond of her child 子.

Sidenote: In Chinese the same character 好, besides the meaning of like/fond, also has the meaning "good." That's why some people explain the origin of this character as "It's good for women to bear children, so 女 + 子 is good." Just saying, you might find this alternate version when you look around online.

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  • Thank you! I had no idea that "squishing" two characters together in this way made it count as a single character, so for exampel this is why compound characters like "土" have sort of like a slant on the final stroke when "squished" correct? Apr 3 at 18:57
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    Yep, that's the form of 土 when written as a component
    – dvx2718
    Apr 3 at 19:22
  • Thanks for letting me know! Apr 3 at 20:09

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