Meaning & readings
persuade, recommend, advise, encourage, offer
Origin
This character combines a sound hint on the left with the radical for strength or effort on the right. The left component, which looks like a plant or grass, provides a rough pronunciation guide. The right component, 力 (strength), suggests the idea of applying effort or force—which when combined with the sound hint, creates a character meaning to persuade or encourage someone to do something. Over time, this evolved to mean offering advice or recommendations, which is a kind of mental or social persuasion.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 雚V
- 力
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 勧め すすめ recommendation; advice
- 勧業 かんぎょう (encouragement of) industry
- 勧告 かんこく advice; counsel
- 勧奨 かんしょう encouragement; stimulation
- 勧進 かんじん temple solicitation
- 勧誘 かんゆう invitation; solicitation
- 勧める すすめる to recommend (someone to do); to advise
- 勧善懲悪 かんぜんちょうあく rewarding good and punishing evil; poetic justice
Reference
- Strokes
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 19
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1068 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+052E7