Meaning & readings
delight, joy
Origin
The character 歡 (simplified to 歓 in modern Japanese) combines two parts. On the left, 雚 provides a sound hint, suggesting how the character should be pronounced. On the right, the component 欠, which depicts a person with their mouth open, works as the meaning-carrying part—it relates to expressions of emotion and response. Together, these parts create a character that conveys the idea of joyful expression, the kind of open-mouthed delight or laughter that comes with happiness.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 雚V
- 欠
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 15
- Kangxi radical
- 76
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1065 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+06B53