Meaning & readings
stimulate, urge, press, demand, incite
Origin
This character combines a person-shape on the left with the component for "foot" on the right. The foot part provides a sound hint for how to pronounce the character rather than contributing to its meaning. The idea of promotion or urging likely comes from the image of someone pushing or pressing another person forward—perhaps by putting pressure on them or stepping up to them. Over time, this physical action of pressing or pushing developed into the broader sense of urging someone to act or stimulating them to do something.
Components
- 亻
- 足
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 9
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #998 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+04FC3