Meaning & readings
courage, cheer up, be in high spirits, bravery, heroism
On’yomi ユウ
Kun’yomi いさ.む
Nanori お、はや
Origin
The character 勇 combines a sound hint at the top with the character for "man" (男) below. The top component suggests the pronunciation, while 男 carries the core meaning. Since courage and bravery were traditionally associated with masculine strength and male warriors in East Asian cultures, pairing the idea of "man" with a sound indicator created this character for courage and brave action. Over time, the character came to represent not just physical masculine strength but the broader concept of bravery and high spirits.
Components
- マ
- 男
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 19
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 4 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1319 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+052C7