Meaning & readings

dreadful, be frightened, fearful

On’yomi フ、ホ
Kun’yomi こわ.い、こわ.がる、お.じる、おそ.れる

Origin

This character combines a heart component on the left, which signals that the character relates to emotions or mental states, with the component for cloth on the right. The cloth component serves as a sound hint, telling you roughly how to pronounce the character, rather than contributing to its meaning. Together, they create a character meaning fear or dread — capturing the idea of a frightened heart or an emotional state of being afraid.

怖 8 strokes

Components

  • 忄 radical left
  • 布 sound hint right

A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.

Common words

  • 恐怖 きょうふ fear; dread
  • 怖い こわい scary; frightening
  • 恐怖症 きょうふしょう phobia; morbid fear
  • 怖がる こわがる to be afraid (of); to fear

Easily confused with

These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.

Reference

Strokes
8
Kangxi radical
61
Formation type
Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
Grade
Jōyō (secondary school)
Frequency rank
#1325 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 2
Unicode
U+06016