Meaning & readings
slap, strike, hit, beat, tell, speak
On’yomi ボク
Origin
This character combines a hand radical on the left, which indicates an action done by hand, with a sound hint on the right that suggests the pronunciation "boku." The right component doesn't contribute to the meaning—it's there mainly to guide how the character should be spoken aloud. Together, the hand radical and the sound hint create a character meaning to strike or slap with one's hand, actions that make a distinctive sound when they land.
Components
- 扌
- 菐
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
- 15
- Kangxi radical
- 64
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1283 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+064B2