Origin

This character combines a sound hint with a meaning clue. The left part, 甚, tells you roughly how to pronounce the character—it sounds like "kan." The right part, 力, which means "power" or "strength," indicates this is about the power of perception or judgment. Together they suggest the idea of mental strength or the power to sense something intuitively—to perceive or grasp something through keen insight rather than obvious evidence. Over time this evolved to mean intuition, perception, or the ability to check and compare things carefully.

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