Meaning & readings

foolish, folly, absurdity, stupid

On’yomi
Kun’yomi おろ.か

Origin

This character combines a heart radical at the bottom, which in kanji classifies emotions and mental states, with the component 禺 at the top that serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation. The character's meaning of foolishness or stupidity comes from the semantic domain of the heart radical—ancient writers associated the heart with intellect and judgment. By pairing the "heart" classifier with a sound component, the character expresses the concept of a foolish or absent mind.

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

13 strokes

Components

  • 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

  • 愚か おろか foolish; stupid
  • 愚痴 ぐち idle complaint; grumble
  • 愚連隊 ぐれんたい gang of young toughs; hooligans

Reference

Strokes
13
Kangxi radical
61
Grade
Jōyō (secondary school)
Frequency rank
#1551 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 1
Unicode
U+0611A