Meaning & readings
bungling, clumsy, unskillful
On’yomi セツ
Kun’yomi つたな.い
Origin
This character combines a hand on the left (扌), which classifies it as an action word, with the component 出 on the right, which hints at its pronunciation. The hand suggests the meaning is about something you do with your hands — in this case, clumsily or without skill. Over time, the character came to express the broader idea of being bungling or unskillful at any task, not just manual ones. The 出 component doesn't tell you what the character means; it's there mainly to suggest how the word sounds.
Components
- 扌
- 出
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
- 8
- Kangxi radical
- 64
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1938 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+062D9