字 Kanji Decipher

Meaning & readings

beat, attack, defeat, conquer

On’yomi ゲキ
Kun’yomi う.つ

Origin

The character 撃 combines a hand (手) at the bottom, which marks this as an action performed by the hands, with components above that hint at the pronunciation. The upper part (車+殳) serves as a sound indicator rather than contributing to the meaning. Since the character means to beat or attack, the hand component makes sense—these are actions you do with your hands. Over time, the character came to represent striking forcefully, whether physically or in battle, with the hand radical consistently showing that this is a manual action.

撃 15 strokes

Components

  • 車+殳 sound hint top
  • 手 radical bottom

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

Common words

  • 一撃 いちげき one blow; one hit
  • 迎撃 げいげき intercept; interception
  • 撃つ うつ to shoot (a gun, person, etc.); to fire
  • 撃沈 げきちん (attacking and) sinking (a ship); sending (a ship) to the bottom
  • 撃墜 げきつい shooting down (an aircraft)
  • 攻撃 こうげき attack; assault
  • 射撃 しゃげき firing; shooting
  • 襲撃 しゅうげき (surprise) attack; assault

Related kanji

Same radical

Reference

Strokes
15
Kangxi radical
64
Formation type
Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
Grade
Jōyō (secondary school)
Frequency rank
#473 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 1
Unicode
U+06483