Meaning & readings
harm, injury
On’yomi ガイ
Origin
This character most likely combines the idea of something harmful striking downward. The shape appears to show a cover or roof on top with something destructive coming down from above — like a roof being damaged or something falling and causing injury. Over time, the pictorial details simplified into the modern form, but the core idea remained: something that damages or harms you. The character eventually came to mean harm or injury in general, not just physical damage to a building.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Pictographic or simple.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (害).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 10
- Kangxi radical
- 40
- Grade
- Grade 4 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #358 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05BB3