Meaning & readings
challenge, contend for, make love to
On’yomi チョウ
Kun’yomi いど.む
Origin
This character combines a hand component on the left, showing the physical action of reaching or grasping, with the sound hint 兆 on the right, which helps indicate the pronunciation. The hand element suggests doing something with your hands or taking action, while the sound component gives you a clue to how the character is spoken aloud. Together they create a character meaning to challenge or contend for something, picturing the active, forceful nature of confronting someone or taking them on.
Components
- 扌
- 兆
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 64
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #989 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+06311