Meaning & readings
guest, visitor, customer, client
On’yomi キャク、カク
Origin
The character combines a roof radical on top, which suggests an indoor setting or shelter, with the component 各 below it that serves as a sound hint for pronunciation. The roof indicates a place where people gather inside, while 各 (pronounced かく in this context) provides the phonetic clue to how the full character should be read. Together, these elements came to represent someone who enters a house or establishment as a visitor or customer — the roof showing the location and the sound component helping speakers remember the pronunciation.
Components
- 宀
- 各
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 観客 かんきゃく spectator; audience
- 客員 きゃくいん guest member; associate member
- 客観 きゃっかん objectivity; objective
- 客間 きゃくま drawing room; parlor
- 客室 きゃくしつ guest room (at a hotel); guest cabin (on a boat)
- 客車 きゃくしゃ passenger car; passenger carriage
- 客席 きゃくせき guest seating (e.g. theater, stadium); passenger seat (e.g. taxi)
- 客船 きゃくせん passenger boat
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 40
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #557 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05BA2