Meaning & readings
fasten, tie up, arrest, constrict
On’yomi カツ
Kun’yomi くく.る
Origin
This character combines a hand component on the left, which signals that the action involves manual movement, with the character for tongue on the right, which serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation. The tongue component doesn't contribute to the meaning but tells you roughly how to say the character aloud. Together, the hand element and the phonetic guidance create a character meaning to tie, bind, or fasten with your hands, which naturally extends to related ideas like arrest or constrict.
Components
- 扌
- 舌
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
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 64
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1026 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+062EC