Meaning & readings
-times, round, game, revolve, counter for occurrences
On’yomi カイ、エ
Kun’yomi まわ.る、-まわ.る、-まわ.り、まわ.す、-まわ.す、まわ.し-、-まわ.し、もとお.る、か.える
Origin
The character is shaped like a square or enclosure, which represents something that goes around or encloses space. The repeated frame structure suggests the idea of going in a circle or coming back to where you started — like walking around the perimeter of something. From this visual sense of circular motion or returning to the starting point, the character came to mean "revolve," "round," and "times" (as in counting repeated occurrences). The enclosed shape itself is a picture of the cyclical, revolving concept at the heart of all these related meanings.
Components
- 囗
- 口
- 囗
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 6
- Kangxi radical
- 31
- Formation type
- Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #50 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+056DE