A few new one :
司る = 官 (つかさ) 取る = つかさどる
趣 = 面向き = おもむき
幼い = 長無い = おさない
Edit :
It seems that there is a suspicion that 橘 = 立花 = たちばな but the relationship is unclear.
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Your weekly dose of kanji words derived from other words.
兆す = 気差す = きざす (same for 兆し = omen)
磔 = 張り付け = はりつけ
武士 = 物の部 = もののふ (An alternate way of reading 武士)
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I wonder if this is one:
退く (しりぞく) - to withdraw/retreat
Something to do with one’s お尻 perhaps?
Dictionary says it’s from 後 (しり) and 退く (そく) which are not really words that are all that common I don’t think. I’m not sure the latter even still exists in modern Japanese. But 後 is from the same concept as 尻, but just the “behind” nuance.
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Thank you good sir
I accidentally found the pot of gold. There is a guy at Japanese stackexchange who compiled a massive list of such special kanji. I converted this list to the format we are using here. Because it was so long, I also skipped plenty of fairly obscure entries.
Plenty of interesting stuff in it, I was especially surprised by 刀＝片刃(かたな) and 魚＝酒菜.
Origin is a valid alternative spelling:
| Word | Reading | Origin |
|---|---|---|
| 概ね | おおむね | 大旨 |
| 俤 | おもかげ | 面影 |
| 象る | かたどる | 形取る |
| 幸せ | しあわせ | 仕合わせ |
| 僕 | しもべ | 下部 |
| 瞼 | まぶた | 目蓋 |
| 黿 | あおうみがめ | 青海亀 |
| 則る | のっとる | 乗っ取る |
| 七夕 | たなばた | 棚機 |
| 帝 | みかど | 御門 |
| 再び | ふたたび | 二度 |
| 簾 | すだれ | 簀垂れ |
| 蔑む | さげすむ | 下げ墨む |
Origin is not a valid alternative spelling:
| Word | Reading | Origin |
|---|---|---|
| 京 | みやこ | 宮処 |
| 喉 | のみと | 飲み門 |
| 羹 | あつもの | 熱物 |
| 鐙 | あぶみ | 足踏 |
| 鬣 | うながみ | 項髪 |
| 頷く | うなづく | 項突 |
| 厩 | うまや | 馬屋 |
| 蚕 | かいこ | 飼い蚕 |
| 刀 | かたな | 片刃 |
| 厠 | かわや | 川屋 |
| 牙 | きば | 牙歯 |
| 梢 | こずえ | 木末 |
| 魚 | さかな | 酒菜 |
| 黄昏 | たそがれ | 誰そ彼 |
| 忽ち | たちまち | 立待 |
| 巷 | ちまた | 道股 |
| 聖 | ひじり | 日知り |
| 彦 | ひこ | 日子 |
| 姫 | ひめ | 日女 |
| 睫 | まつげ | 目つ毛 |
| 蝮 | まむし | 真虫 |
| 峰 | みね | 御峰 |
| 娶る | めとる | 女取る |
| 社 | やしろ | 屋代 |
| 慮る | おもいはか | 思計る |
| 巫女 | みこ | 御子 |
| 嫁 | よめ | (呼・弱・良・夜)女 |
| 蝙蝠 | かわほり | 皮張り |
| 啄木鳥 | きつつき | 木突き |
| 袂 | たもと | 手元 |
| 素人 | しろうと | 白人 |
| 玄人 | くろうと | 黒人 |
| 簪 | かんざし | 髪挿し |
| 瞳 | ひとみ | 人見 |
| 眼 | まなこ | 目な子 |
| 裸 | はだか | 肌赤 |
| 謀 | はかりごと | 計り事 |
| 幹 | みき | 身木 |
| 命 | いのち | 息の霊 |
| 蛟 | みずち | 水霊 |
| 宮 | みや | 御屋 |
| 窓 | まど | 目門・間戸 |
| 李 | すもも | 酸桃 |
| 古 | いにしえ | 往にし方 |
| 恣 | ほしいまま | 欲しい儘 |
| 嘯く | うそぶく | 嘘吹く |
| 奉る | たてまつる | 立て祭 |
| 麓 | ふもと | 踏本 |
| 省みる | かえりみる | 帰り見る |
| 砦 | とりで | 取り出 |
| 滞る | とどこおる | 留凍る |
| 惨め | みじめ | 見じ目 |
| 悉く | ことごとく | 事事く |
Origin is not an alternative spelling and is pronounced differently due to sound changes:
|Word|Origin|
|-|-|-|
|喉|飲み門|
|一昨日|遠つ日|
|築|城築く|
|果物|木だ物|
|遮る|先切る|
|杯|酒杯|
|戦う|叩く|
|東|日向風|
|前|目方|
|盥|手洗い|
|筆|文手|
It would be nice to insert all of this into the OP, but I have to admit I suck really bad at あいうえお ordering, some help would be nice 
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Wow, two or three of those four are kinda terrible. Though still not as bad as 家内.
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Some of those are weird (like 戦う from 叩く). Do we know if the list is completely accurate?
P.S. Using this copied list kind of takes some of the fun out of it…
Gotta check them. But the dictionary backs it.
For 戦う=叩く the explanation is here. But it’s difficult to follow, some kind of grammatical shift in old japanese ?
And for the accuracy, the guy seems to have done his homework, very often when a word seems weird, I tried to find his sources and pretty much every time I could find it on dictionary.goo.ne.jp, or from gogen-allguide.com. However, very often, the source say it’s the “main theory” and there is plenty of different interpretation. Etymology is a freaking hard field, for sure…
Lol, the topic was a bit stale, so I wanted to revive it, but it was maybe too much ^^
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I was thinking that 培う (つちかう - to cultivate) looked like it might have come from 土(つち - soil) + 飼う (かう - to raise an animal). But the dictionary seems to say it’s from 土 (つち) +養 (か) う, which makes sense, except that 養う is やしなう at least these days. The meaning of 養う overlaps a little with 飼う, at least in the sense of raising or bringing up something, so I imagine 養う may have shared the reading with 飼う at one point.
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培う = 土養う is really nice ! Too bad the modern reading of 養う doesn’t match anymore…
Funnily enough, I also found an agriculture related verb where the reading also almost match… It’s 耕す (たがやす - to plow). It come from 田(た - rice paddy) + 返す (かえす - turn over), which make a lot of sense. Actually, if I understand correctly, according to goo 耕す = たがえす was a valid spelling at some point but the modern spelling is now clearly たがやす.
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Understanding the etymology makes these verbs so much easier to remember!
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Typo in kana column?
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Fixed. Thanks for letting me know !
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Don’t think this was posted, but I’m on my phone and don’t entirely trust the search.
公 (おおやけ) from 大宅 or 大家
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育む (はぐくむ) from 羽 (は) を 含む (くくむ), the efforts of birds to raise their young.
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Just found a really good one:
繙く (ひもとく), which comes from 紐解く and can also be spelled that way. It means “to read a book” or “to unravel, to discover”, and at least that second meaning makes perfect sense from the origin.
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I found another one with a valid origin spelling: 礫 and 小石
(my IME would not find 礫 when typing こいし somehow, but it is confirmed by jisho and 大辞林 
)
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That’s probably because in this case 小石 appears to be the primary spelling.
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