Meaning & readings
salvation, save, help, rescue, reclaim
Origin
The character 救 combines two parts to express the idea of rescue or help. On the left, 求 acts as a sound hint, roughly indicating the character's pronunciation as キュウ. On the right, 攵 is a small radical that suggests action or movement — it comes from an old pictograph of a hand holding a stick or whip. Together, these parts create a character meaning to rescue or save someone: the action component (攵) paired with the sound element (求) produces a character associated with active intervention and help.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 求
- 攵
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 66
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #799 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+06551