also: しわぶき
noun
General term for a cough or the act of coughing. The medical term 'tussis' is a technical synonym.
風邪で咳が止まらない。
I can't stop coughing because of a cold.
彼の咳がうつったかもしれない。
I might have caught his cough.
Standard kanji spelling. The reading せき is the modern common reading.
Archaic reading. Rarely used in modern Japanese; the common reading is せき.
Kana spelling is common in everyday writing, especially when the kanji is not needed.
くしゃみ means 'sneeze', while 咳 refers specifically to a cough.
The kanji 咳 is a phono-semantic compound: the mouth radical 口 and the phonetic component 亥 (gai). The reading せき is the Sino-Japanese on'yomi. The archaic reading しわぶき is a native Japanese word.