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.
Components
- 勹+けいがしら
- 心
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 61
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #309 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 3
- Unicode
- U+06025