Meaning & readings
stagnate, be delayed, overdue, arrears
Origin
The character combines water (shown by the three-stroke water radical on the left) with a sound hint on the right that suggests how to pronounce the character. The water element connects to the core meaning: when water stops flowing or pools up, it stagnates. This image of water not moving smoothly led to the broader sense of anything being delayed, held up, or stuck in arrears. The right component doesn't tell you the meaning, just hints at the pronunciation.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 氵
- 帯
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
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1107 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+06EDE