Meaning & readings

ooze, flow, soak in, penetrate, secrete

On’yomi ヒツ、ヒ

Origin

This character combines water (shown by the three-dot radical on the left) with a sound hint on the right that suggests how to pronounce it. The water radical makes sense for the meanings because oozing, soaking, and secreting all involve liquid moving slowly through or out of something. The right component is primarily there to tell you how the character sounds, not to add meaning to the word.

泌 8 strokes

Components

  • 氵 radical left
  • 必 sound hint right

A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.

Common words

Reference

Strokes
8
Kangxi radical
85
Formation type
Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
Grade
Jōyō (secondary school)
Frequency rank
#2112 (newspapers)
Former JLPT
level 1
Unicode
U+06CCC