Meaning & readings
deliver, reach, arrive, report, notify, forward
Origin
The character combines two parts: the left side (尸) is a radical that suggests a body or something extending outward, and the right side (由) provides a sound hint for pronunciation. The overall shape pictures something reaching from one place to another — like a body or object stretching forward to make contact. This visual idea of extension and connection naturally came to mean "deliver" or "reach," since delivering something means sending it to arrive at a destination. The character basically shows the motion of something getting through to where it needs to go.
Components
- 尸
- 由
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 8
- Kangxi radical
- 44
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #939 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05C4A