Meaning & readings
yonder, facing, beyond, confront, defy, tend toward, approach
Origin
The character 向 most likely pictures a person or figure (the vertical strokes on the left) facing or turning toward a direction (suggested by the right side). The shape shows motion or orientation—someone pointing or leaning toward something, which naturally led to meanings like "facing," "toward," and "confront." Over time, this visual idea of directional orientation expanded to abstract senses like "tend toward" and "yonder" (a distant place you face or look toward). The character essentially captures the gesture of turning one's body or attention in a particular direction.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (向).
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 6
- Kangxi radical
- 30
- Formation type
- Pictographic or simple
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #182 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05411