Meaning & readings
harden, set, clot, curdle
On’yomi コ
Kun’yomi かた.める、かた.まる、かた.まり、かた.い
Origin
The character 固 combines a box or enclosure (囗, appearing twice here as a frame) with 古, which serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation. The box imagery suggests something enclosed or bounded, which connects to the idea of something becoming solid, hardened, or set in place—when things harden, they become fixed and unchanging, just like something contained within a boundary. Over time, this visual metaphor of a bounded, contained form came to represent the concept of hardening or becoming fixed and solid.
Components
- 囗
- 古
- 囗
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 8
- Kangxi radical
- 31
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 4 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #750 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+056FA