Meaning & readings
confer, relate, narrate, describe
On’yomi ジョ
Kun’yomi つい.ず、ついで
Origin
This character combines two parts: the left component 余 provides a sound hint, telling you roughly how to pronounce the character (like "jo"), while the right component 又 is a classifying radical that means "hand" or "act." Together they suggest the idea of using your hand or taking action to express something — which connects to the meanings of telling, describing, or narrating. The shape evolved to represent the act of communicating or recounting information through speech or writing.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 29
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1954 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+053D9