居 - To Just Sit and BE

Readings & Meanings:

い（る）

キョ

live, exist, reside

Common Usage:

居間

皇居

居留守

Examples:

居間にはこたつが置いてあった。

皇居は東京の中心地にある。

セールスマンが来たので、居留守を使った。

Translations:

A kotatsu was conveniently placed in the living room.

The Imperial Palace is in the center of Tokyo.

Because a salesman had come, we pretended to be out.

Radical:

Wow.

尸 (Shikabane) comes from a kanji for corpse or buttocks.

古 means old, hard, dried out and comes from a pictograph of a skull.

You'd think this kanji meant death, non-existence, right? I would, after putting those radicals together. But instead, 居 refers to sitting (with your 尸) on a hard surface (古), which means to stay, to exist, to live.

Just putting that together in my head makes me a little dizzy.

Important:

居る is not 要る. Do you need to sit on a hard surface? of course not.

But remember, 居る as a verb is almost always written in ひらがな as いる.

References:

http://www.thejapanesepage.com/kanji/kanji/u.htm