Meaning & readings
rejoice, take pleasure in
On’yomi キ
Kun’yomi よろこ.ぶ、よろこ.ばす
Nanori あき、きゅ、のぶ、ゆき、よし
Origin
This character combines a mouth (the square shape at the bottom) with a figure of a person (the top component). The idea is that when someone's mouth opens wide with joy — they smile or laugh — you can see a person expressing happiness. By picturing a person with an open, smiling mouth, the character came to mean rejoicing or taking pleasure in something. Over time, the visual picture simplified into the abstract form we see today, but the core idea of a happy, expressive mouth remained tied to the meaning of joy.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 30
- Formation type
- Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #769 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+0559C