Meaning & readings
repent, regret
On’yomi カイ
Kun’yomi く.いる、く.やむ、くや.しい
Origin
The character combines a heart radical on the left, which marks this as a word about emotions or inner states, with the component 毎 on the right that serves as a sound hint for the character's Chinese pronunciation. The heart component makes sense for "regret" because regret is fundamentally an emotional response—a feeling of sorrow or disappointment about something you did or didn't do. Over time, the two parts fused into a single character that carries the meaning of repenting or feeling remorseful about past actions.
Components
- 忄
- 毎
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
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1460 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+06094