Meaning & readings
choose, select, elect, prefer
On’yomi タク
Kun’yomi えら.ぶ
Origin
This character combines a hand gesture on the left with a component on the right that sounds like "shaku" or "taku," giving a hint to the pronunciation. The hand component suggests the physical action of reaching out and picking something, which connects to the meaning of choosing or selecting. When you choose something, you typically use your hand to pick it from options available to you. Over time, the character came to represent the mental act of selection as well as the physical gesture of picking.
Components
- 扌
- 尺
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
- 7
- Kangxi radical
- 64
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #847 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+0629E