Meaning & readings
portable, carry (in hand), armed with, bring along
Origin
This character combines the hand radical on the left, which signals that the word relates to manual actions or holding things, with a sound hint on the right that tells you roughly how to pronounce it. The hand component makes sense for "carry" or "bring along" — these are things you do with your hands. Over time, the character's meaning expanded to cover the general sense of "portable" or "armed with," but the hand radical stayed to show it's about something you handle or hold.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 扌
- 隽
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 携帯 けいたい carrying (on one's person or in the hand)
- 提携 ていけい cooperation; tie-up
- 必携 ひっけい indispensable; essential
- 連携 れんけい cooperation; coordination
- 携える たずさえる to carry in one's hand; to carry with one
- 携わる たずさわる to engage in; to participate in
- 携帯電話 けいたいでんわ mobile phone; cell phone
- 携帯ストラップ けいたいストラップ straps for mobile phone
Reference
- Strokes
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 64
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1017 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+0643A