Meaning & readings
report, news, reward, retribution
On’yomi ホウ
Kun’yomi むく.いる
Origin
This character combines two elements to express the idea of returning or repaying. The left side shows a person (the human radical), and the right side contains earth or ground, suggesting something solid and established. Together, these parts create the sense of giving back or returning something — whether that's news being reported back, a reward given in return for service, or retribution that comes back to someone. Over time, the character's meaning expanded from the basic sense of "repay" to include "report" (returning information) and other related meanings involving reciprocal action or consequence.
Components
- 土
- 𢆉
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 32
- Formation type
- Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #167 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05831