Meaning & readings
arrest, seize, concerned, adhere to, despite
On’yomi コウ
Kun’yomi かか.わる
Origin
The left side of this character is a hand radical, which shows this is about physical action or grasping. The right side, 句, is a sound hint that tells you roughly how to pronounce the character — it sounds similar to "kou." By combining a hand (action) with this sound marker, the character came to mean "to seize" or "to arrest." Over time, the meanings expanded to include abstract ideas like being concerned or adhering to something, since these involve being mentally "grasped" or held by something.
Components
- 扌
- 句
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 8
- Kangxi radical
- 64
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1336 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+062D8