me / め
The fourth of the M row — two flowing strokes 'me' that double as the word for eye and the marker for direction.
Pronunciation
The character め represents the syllable 'me', a soft 'm' followed by 'e' as in 'pet'. Part of the ま-row. Take care: め looks similar to ぬ (nu) — but め is more open, while ぬ has an extra closed loop at the lower right.
め anchors the め-row and is one of the most useful hiragana in everyday Japanese — it IS the word for 目 (eye) on its own. It also appears in 飴 (candy), 雨 (rain), 姫 (princess) and as the noun-stem suffix that marks ordinal directions: 一回目 ("first time"), 三日目 ("third day"). The shape is closely related to ぬ: both have looping bodies, but め's loop sits lower.
How to write め
Trace め on the canvas at the top of the page. Animated arrows show each stroke's direction; trace along them and the stroke fills in. Each numbered step below explains what that stroke does.
A short slanted stroke on the upper left — a small downward sweep, quick.
A long flowing stroke that begins where stroke 1 ends, drops down through the centre, loops around the lower right in a closed circle, and exits with a small flick on the lower right. The loop sits noticeably LOWER than ぬ's loop — that's the key visual difference between the two characters.
Origin
Hiragana め evolved from the cursive form of the kanji 女 (me as a historic reading) — meaning "woman." The kanji's slanted top and curving body compressed into the two flowing strokes of め, preserving the small upper-left accent and the lower right-side loop.
Common words starting with め
Printable practice sheet
Print this worksheet to practice writing め by hand — the top row shows the stroke order to trace, then fill the blank squares.
Lock it into memory
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