[SoCal Pubbie]

Sushi (すし, 寿司, 鮨?) is a Japanese food consisting of cooked vinegared rice (鮨飯 sushi-meshi?) combined with other ingredients (ネタ neta?), seafood, vegetables and sometimes tropical fruits. Ingredients and forms of sushi presentation vary widely, but the ingredient which all sushi have in common is rice (also referred to as shari (しゃり?) or sumeshi (酢飯?)).

[dr_lew]

Sushi (すし, 寿司, 鮨?)

I was just looking this up in my several Japanese dictionaries but could not find the kanji, 寿司 , which is the most common form.

Looking online, I find the explanation that this is just a fancy phonetic form, SU SHI, or すし in the phonetic hiragana syllabary, and without a semantic basis, except the first character has propitious intimations of good luck, etc. so it is essentially a marketing creation.

The kanji, 鮨 , has the meaning of "delicious fish".