Meaning & readings
wandering, waves, billows, reckless, unrestrained
On’yomi ロウ
Nanori なに、なみ
Origin
This character combines water (the three dots on the left, a radical that marks characters related to liquids and flowing things) with the component 良, which serves as a sound hint for the pronunciation. The character originally depicted the restless, rolling motion of ocean waves — water in constant, uncontrolled movement. Over time, the meaning expanded from the physical image of waves to describe any kind of wandering or reckless behavior, since both involve moving without clear direction or restraint.
Components
- 氵
- 良
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 10
- Kangxi radical
- 85
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1508 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+06D6A