禁 (prohibition)

Its core meanings are forbidding, prohibition, and taboo.

禁 in words such as 禁止, 禁煙, and 禁忌 can mean prohibition, no smoking in Japanese, and taboo or medical contraindication. 監禁 means confinement. The full expression tells you which sense applies.

If someone sends only 禁, ask for the surrounding phrase before acting. The character alone does not say what action they want stopped.

Where did 禁 come from?

A Han-era dictionary records an explanation, not an origin date.

The Han-era Shuowen Jiezi glosses 禁 through taboos about good and bad fortune. It analyzes the character with 示 and 林, with 林 supplying the sound.

Dictionary senses also include rules, imperial grounds set aside from public access, secrecy, confinement, and endurance. This range does not show which sense came first or establish a sacred-grove picture.

How is 禁 read in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean?

The shared character has different readings and compounds in each language.

Mandarin reads it jìn, roughly like “chin” with the tongue set farther forward and a falling tone; Japanese uses kin with a short i; Korean uses geum, with a vowel pronounced without rounding the lips.

Chinese uses 禁止 and 禁忌; Japanese also uses 禁煙 and 禁物; Korean compounds include 금지 (prohibition), 금기 (taboo), and 감금 (confinement). These examples show why context matters: sharing a character does not make the full words interchangeable.