Meaning & readings

board, load (a vehicle), ride

On’yomi トウ

Origin

This character combines a hand component on the left, which signals an action you do with your hands, with a sound hint on the right that tells you roughly how to pronounce it. The hand element points toward the physical act of boarding or loading—you use your hands to climb onto or place something into a vehicle. The right component is primarily there to hint at the character's pronunciation rather than add meaning. Together, the hand action plus the sound indicator create a character that means to board, load, or ride.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).

12 strokes

Components

  • radical left
  • sound hint right

A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.

Common words

  • 搭載 とうさい loading (on a ship); equipping (an aircraft, car, etc.) with
  • 搭乗 とうじょう embarkation; boarding (a ship or aircraft)

Reference

Strokes
12
Kangxi radical
64
Grade
Jōyō (secondary school)
Frequency rank
#1472 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 1
Unicode
U+0642D