Meaning & readings
journey, travel, chase away, let go, going, before, formerly
Origin
The character 往 combines two components to express the idea of traveling or going. The left part 彳 is a classifier for movement and walking—it appears in many characters related to paths and journeys. The right part 主 means "master" or "chief," and here it works as a phonetic hint for the sound, while also suggesting someone taking charge or heading forward. Together, the image is of a person or authority figure in motion, which naturally came to mean "to go," "to travel," or "to journey." The meanings related to time, like "before" or "ancient," likely developed from the sense of moving forward into space or backward through time.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).
Components
- 彳
- 主
Common words
- 往診 おうしん doctor's visit; house call
- 往生 おうじょう passing on to the next life
- 往年 おうねん years gone by; earlier years
- 往復 おうふく making a round trip; going and returning
- 往来 おうらい coming and going; traffic
- 既往症 きおうしょう illness that one had in the past; previous illness
- 右往左往 うおうさおう moving about in confusion; going every which way
- 立ち往生 たちおうじょう being brought to a standstill; being stranded
Reference
- Strokes
- 8
- Kangxi radical
- 60
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1421 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+05F80