Meaning & readings

hurry, emergency, sudden, steep

On’yomi キュウ
Kun’yomi いそ.ぐ、いそ.ぎ、せ.く

Origin

This character combines a heart radical at the bottom with a sound hint at the top. The heart radical represents emotions and inner states, which makes sense because feeling rushed or urgent is an internal sensation. The top component signals roughly how to pronounce the character. When your heart feels pressed or tense — that's what urgency and hurrying are all about, so pairing the idea of heart with the sound marker created this character to express sudden haste or emergency.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).

9 strokes

Components

  • 勹+けいがしら sound hint top
  • radical bottom

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

Common words

  • 応急 おうきゅう emergency fix; tentative measure
  • 緩急 かんきゅう high and low speed; fast and slow
  • 危急 ききゅう emergency; crisis
  • 急ぎ いそぎ haste; hurry
  • 急ぐ いそぐ to hurry; to rush
  • 急患 きゅうかん emergency case
  • 急激 きゅうげき sudden; abrupt
  • 急行 きゅうこう hurrying (to somewhere); rushing

Reference

Strokes
9
Kangxi radical
61
Grade
Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
Frequency rank
#309 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 3
Unicode
U+06025