止める
やめる · yameru · JLPT N4 · verb-ichidan
to stop
🛑 sounds like yah, meh... ru-done: you shrug and quit the habit
止 is the stop kanji, built from a footprint planted in place. Read やめる, it means quitting or giving up an activity (smoking, a job). The same spelling read とめる means halting something that is moving.
止 — pictograph of a foot/toe
止 originally depicted a human foot with toes, shown as a footprint on the ground. From this concrete image of a foot it came to mean 'to stop' or 'halt' — the place where a step ends. It also serves as a component in many characters relating to feet, walking, or stopping, such as 步 and 正.
とめる · tomeru · JLPT N4 · verb-ichidan
to stop (something)
🛑 tomeru: TOE-MEH-RU — put your TOE on the brake to stop it
止 means stop; it began as a drawing of a foot planted in place. 止める (tomeru) is transitive: you stop something. Its partner 止まる (tomaru) means something stops by itself. The -eru ending marks the one you do to an object.
止 — pictograph of a foot/toe
止 originally depicted a human foot with toes, shown as a footprint on the ground. From this concrete image of a foot it came to mean 'to stop' or 'halt' — the place where a step ends. It also serves as a component in many characters relating to feet, walking, or stopping, such as 步 and 正.
とどめる · todomeru · JLPT N1 · verb-ichidan
to end
止 — pictograph of a foot/toe
止 originally depicted a human foot with toes, shown as a footprint on the ground. From this concrete image of a foot it came to mean 'to stop' or 'halt' — the place where a step ends. It also serves as a component in many characters relating to feet, walking, or stopping, such as 步 and 正.