If you combine numbers with 輪 and 車, you produce plenty of words, starting with one we’ve already seen:
一輪車 (ichirinsha: unicycle; wheelbarrow) one + wheel + vehicle
二輪車 (nirinsha: two-wheeled vehicle) two + wheel + vehicleThis usually refers to a bicycle or motorcycle. But people rarely use 二輪車, because every two-wheeled vehicle has its own name, such as 自転車 (jitensha: bicycle, self + to turn + vehicle) and 自動二輪車 (jidōnirinsha: motorcycle, automatic (1st 2 chars.) + two + wheel + vehicle).
三輪車 (sanrinsha: tricycle) three + wheel + vehicle
Add just one more wheel, and you graduate from a trike to a car!
四輪車 (yonrinsha: car) four + wheel + vehicle
For numbers higher than four, you need to remove the 車, and you might need to add other kanji. Also, 輪 stops meaning “wheel” and starts meaning “ring.”
So what kind of concoction has five rings? Well, how about the Olympic emblem?!
五輪大会 (gorin taikai: Olympic Games)
five + rings + competition (last 2 chars.)Isn’t this perfect?
I don’t know what has six rings. But if we jump ahead to seven, we find something awfully strange:
七輪 (shichirin: earthen charcoal brazier (for cooking))
seven + rings
Pictures usually help, but I don’t see seven of anything. Do you?
It’s also hard to understand just what the next compound is referring to:
九輪 (kurin: nine-ring pagoda spire) nine + ring
Let me Google 九輪 for a picture…. What do you know? Nearly all the images that came up were of bouquets with nine flowers or pictures of nine flowers growing from the same place on a stem. See what I mean here? Or here?
But you’ll see a ringed pagoda spire here, as well as in this picture. And in this one you can see the compound 九輪, along with the spire. Boy, some of them really look like radio towers, don’t they?
