Meaning & readings
sociable, kind, courteous, hospitable, cordial
Origin
This character combines the radical for "heart" at the bottom, which classifies emotions and inner states, with sound-hint components at the top. The top part signals roughly how the character is pronounced. Together, they create an image of a warm, heartfelt attitude — the kind component points to feelings of warmth and kindness, while the heart radical emphasizes these are genuine inner qualities rather than just outward behavior. The overall character came to mean cordial, hospitable feelings that come from a sincere heart.
Components
- 豸+艮
- 心
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
- 17
- Kangxi radical
- 61
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1135 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+061C7