Meaning & readings
colleague, official, companion
On’yomi リョウ
Origin
This character combines the "person" radical on the left with a sound component on the right that hints at the pronunciation "ryō". The right side, which resembles a building or shelter with an open space, originally carried the idea of a place where people gather or work together. Over time, this character came to mean colleague or companion—people who work in the same place or capacity. The person radical makes clear we're talking about a human relationship rather than just a location.
Components
- 亻
- 尞
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 14
- Kangxi radical
- 9
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #709 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+050DA