Meaning & readings
hate, detest
On’yomi ゾウ
Kun’yomi にく.む、にく.い、にく.らしい、にく.しみ
Origin
The character 憎 combines the heart radical on the left, which classifies emotions and mental states, with the component 曽 on the right that provides a sound hint for pronunciation. The heart radical shows this is about inner feeling rather than physical action, while 曽 suggests how the character should be pronounced. Together, the emotional center (heart) paired with this sound hint creates a character expressing the intense negative feeling of hatred or disgust.
Components
- 忄
- 曽
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
- 14
- Kangxi radical
- 61
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1808 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+0618E