Meaning & readings
strong
On’yomi キョウ、ゴウ
Kun’yomi つよ.い、つよ.まる、つよ.める、し.いる、こわ.い
Nanori すね
Origin
The character 強 most likely combines two elements: the left side represents muscle or physical form, while the right side adds a sound hint for pronunciation. The overall shape evolved to represent the idea of physical power and strength. Over time, the visual elements became more abstract through repeated writing, but the character retained its meaning of being strong or powerful. This makes sense because strength is fundamentally a physical quality that ancient writers could depict through body-related imagery.
Components
This character is treated as a single, undivided shape (強).
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 57
- Formation type
- Pictographic or simple
- Grade
- Grade 2 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #112 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+05F37