Meaning & readings

stipend, salary

On’yomi ホウ

Origin

The character combines a person radical on the left with the component on the right, which serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation. The character originally meant "to offer" or "to serve," and by extension came to represent offerings or payments given to someone. When paired with the person radical, the idea of an offering or payment naturally evolved into the meaning of a regular stipend or salary that a person receives, especially in historical Japanese contexts like payment to officials or retainers.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).

10 strokes

Components

  • radical left
  • sound hint right

A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.

Common words

  • 減俸 げんぽう salary reduction; salary cut
  • 年俸 ねんぽう annual salary
  • 俸給 ほうきゅう salary (esp. public employees); wages

Reference

Strokes
10
Kangxi radical
9
Grade
Jōyō (secondary school)
Frequency rank
#1834 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 1
Unicode
U+04FF8