Kanji for Destroy — 滅

滅 is read metsu in compounds and horobiru or horobosu as a verb. It is not the everyday word for breaking something — 壊す (kowasu) does that. 滅 means to be wiped out entirely: a species, a civilisation, a flame going out for good.

The character puts the water radical 氵 beside a halberd and fire: flame extinguished, and with it whatever the flame stood for. Thirteen strokes, taught at senior-high level rather than in primary school, and it belongs firmly to written and literary registers.

Its vocabulary is correspondingly absolute: 絶滅 (zetsumetsu) extinction, 消滅 (shōmetsu) vanishing without trace, 全滅 (zenmetsu) annihilation, 滅亡 (metsubō) the fall of a nation. Manga readers will know it from 鬼滅の刃 (Kimetsu no Yaiba, Demon Slayer), where 滅 is the “slaying” in the title.