Meaning & readings
bases, fort, rampart, walls, base(ball)
On’yomi ルイ、ライ、スイ
Kun’yomi とりで
Nanori る
Origin
The character shows earth or soil at the bottom, which makes sense because a fort or rampart is built from earth and stone. The component on top serves as a sound hint, roughly suggesting how the character should be pronounced, rather than adding to the meaning. By combining the earth radical with this sound element, the character came to mean a fortified structure or base—both the physical rampart and, in modern times, the bases used in baseball.
Components
- 畾V
- 土
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 32
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #651 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+05841