Meaning & readings
pleasure, happy, rejoice
On’yomi ユ
Kun’yomi たの.しい、たの.しむ
Nanori ゆう
Origin
The character combines the "heart" component on the left, which shows this word relates to feelings and emotions, with a sound hint on the right that indicates how the character should be pronounced. The heart radical makes clear the kanji is about an emotional state, while the right side borrowed the sound of an earlier Chinese word to help readers know how to say it. Together, they create a character for the pleasant feeling of joy or enjoyment that comes from the heart.
Components
- 忄
- 兪
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 12
- Kangxi radical
- 61
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1974 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+06109