Meaning & readings
longing, covetousness, greed, passion, desire, craving
On’yomi ヨク
Kun’yomi ほっ.する、ほ.しい
Origin
This character combines two parts to express desire. The right side, 欠, shows a person with mouth open, which is the visual foundation for meanings related to lacking or wanting. The left side, 谷, serves as a sound hint to tell you how to pronounce the character, rather than adding to its meaning. Together, the open mouth of someone lacking something captures the sense of longing or craving for what one does not yet have.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 11
- Kangxi radical
- 76
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #902 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+06B32