Meaning & readings
on foot, junior, emptiness, vanity, futility, uselessness, ephemeral thing, gang, set, party, people
On’yomi ト
Kun’yomi いたずら、あだ
Nanori かち
Origin
This character combines "walk" (the left component, showing a person's legs in motion) with "run" (the right component), creating the idea of movement on foot. When you combine these two components about moving, the character came to mean "on foot" or traveling without a vehicle. Over time, the meaning expanded to include the sense of something being empty or futile — like a journey that accomplishes nothing, or an action taken without real purpose. The core sense of aimless movement underlies both the literal meaning (traveling on foot) and the figurative meanings (emptiness, uselessness).
Components
- 彳
- 走
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 10
- Kangxi radical
- 60
- Formation type
- Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
- Grade
- Grade 4 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #817 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05F92