字 Kanji Decipher

Meaning & readings

bad, vice, rascal, evil, wrong

On’yomi アク、オ
Kun’yomi わる.い、わる-、あ.し、にく.い、-にく.い、ああ、いずくに、いずくんぞ、にく.む

Origin

The character combines the heart or mind component at the bottom with a sound-hint component at the top. The heart radical makes sense for capturing an emotional or moral concept, since many ideas about character and disposition were thought to originate from the heart in East Asian philosophy. The top component signals roughly how the character should be pronounced, following the common pattern in kanji where one part suggests meaning and another suggests sound. Together, these pieces create a character for moral or emotional badness.

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

悪 11 strokes

Components

  • 亜 sound hint top
  • 心 radical bottom

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

Common words

  • 悪い わるい bad; poor
  • 悪さ わるさ badness; mean mischief
  • 悪意 あくい ill will; spite
  • 悪化 あっか deterioration; getting worse
  • 悪寒 おかん chill; shakes
  • 悪気 わるぎ ill will; malice
  • 悪戯 いたずら mischief; prank
  • 悪事 あくじ evil deed; wrongdoing

Related kanji

Same radical

Reference

Strokes
11
Kangxi radical
61
Grade
Grade 3 (Kyōiku)
Frequency rank
#530 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 3
Unicode
U+060AA