Meaning & readings
reap, cut, clip, trim, prune
On’yomi ガイ、カイ
Kun’yomi か.る
Nanori かっ、かり
Origin
This character combines a knife or blade radical on the right, which signals that the character is about cutting, with a sound component on the left that guides pronunciation. The blade radical makes clear the character concerns sharp tools and cutting actions. The left component provides a phonetic hint for how to say the word, similar to how many Chinese characters work — you get the general meaning from the knife radical and a rough sound guide from the other part. Together they create a character that means to cut, reap, or trim with a blade.
Components
- 乂
- 刂
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 4
- Kangxi radical
- 18
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1738 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+05208