八百屋
やおや · yaoya · JLPT N5 · noun
greengrocer
🥬🏪 八百屋 = eight hundred + shop: the shop that sells 800 things
八百 (yao) is an old way to say eight hundred, meaning countless, and 屋 (ya) is shop. A greengrocer stocks countless kinds of produce. The reading yaoya is irregular, so learn it as one unit: ya-o-ya.
八 — two strokes diverging outward
Originally a pictograph of two lines splitting apart, meaning 'to divide' or 'separate.' It was later borrowed phonetically to write the number eight, and this borrowed numerical sense became dominant. The original 'divide' meaning survives in compounds like 分.
百 — 一 (one) on top of 白 (white)
百 means 'hundred.' It combines 一 (one) above 白 (white), where 白 here is borrowed for its sound rather than its meaning. Some scholars see it as derived from an early form of 白 with an added stroke to mark the new numerical sense.
屋 — corpse 尸 + reach/arrive 至
屋 originally depicted a place where one arrives (至) to rest under a roof, with 尸 here representing a covering or dwelling rather than a corpse. The character came to mean 'house' or 'room'. Today it commonly refers to a house or a room within a building.