Meaning & readings
gain, get, find, earn, acquire, can, may, able to, profit, advantage, benefit
Origin
This character combines a "walking" or "movement" component on the left with a sound hint on the right. The left side suggests the idea of progressing or advancing toward something, which naturally led to meanings like "gain" or "acquire"—you move forward and obtain something. The right component provides a rough guide to how the character is pronounced in Chinese, helping readers recognize it even if they hadn't seen it before. Over time, the visual sense of forward movement became less obvious as the character's written form simplified, but the meaning of getting or obtaining things stuck around.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 彳
- 㝵
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- お得 おとく good-value; economical
- 獲得 かくとく acquisition; possession
- 取得 しゅとく obtaining (a qualification, right, object, etc.); acquisition (of land, property, etc.)
- 拾得 しゅうとく finding (lost property); picking up
- 所得 しょとく income; earnings
- 心得 こころえ knowledge (of a skill, art, etc.); proficiency
- 説得 せっとく persuasion
- 損得 そんとく loss and gain; advantage and disadvantage
Reference
- Strokes
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 60
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #175 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+05F97