Meaning & readings
aggression, attack, criticize, polish
Origin
The character combines a hand or action radical (攵) on the right with 工, which serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation コウ. The hand radical suggests doing something forceful or striking, which fits with meanings like attack and aggression. When you strike or press forcefully against something, you also wear it down and polish it — so the shape visually suggests both the aggressive act and the smoothing that comes from repeated forceful contact. Together, these elements created a character that means to attack, criticize, or polish through vigorous action.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 工
- 攵
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
- 攻め せめ attack; offence
- 攻撃 こうげき attack; assault
- 攻守 こうしゅ offense and defense; offence and defence
- 攻勢 こうせい offensive (movement); aggression
- 攻防 こうぼう offense and defense; offence and defence
- 攻略 こうりゃく capture (of enemy territory); taking (by storm)
- 専攻 せんこう major subject; special study
- 猛攻 もうこう fierce attack
Reference
- Strokes
- 7
- Kangxi radical
- 66
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #532 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+0653B