Meaning & readings
waterfall, rapids, cascade
On’yomi ロウ、ソウ
Kun’yomi たき
Nanori らき
Origin
The character 滝 combines the water radical on the left, which identifies the word as something involving water, with the character 竜 (dragon) on the right. The 竜 component provides a sound hint for how to pronounce the character, rather than contributing a water-related meaning. Together, these elements form a character that represents the powerful, turbulent flow of water cascading down—a waterfall or rapids.
Components
- 氵
- 竜
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 13
- Kangxi radical
- 85
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1478 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+06EDD