Meaning & readings
dirty, pollute, disgrace, rape, defile
On’yomi オ
Kun’yomi けが.す、けが.れる、けが.らわしい、よご.す、よご.れる、きたな.い
Origin
This character combines water on the left, which marks it as relating to liquids or things that flow, with a sound component on the right that hints at how to pronounce it. The basic idea is that water becomes dirty or polluted — when water is no longer clean, it becomes "defiled" or "filthy." From there, the meaning expanded to cover any kind of pollution or defilement, including the disgrace that comes from wrongdoing. The character essentially pictures the concept of water losing its purity, which fits both the literal sense of dirty water and the figurative sense of moral corruption.
Components
- 氵
- 亏V
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 6
- Kangxi radical
- 85
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #908 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+06C5A