Meaning & readings
violent, get excited, enraged, chafe, incite
Origin
The character combines water (shown by the three-dot radical on the left) with a sound hint on the right that suggests the pronunciation "geki." Water is used here because violent action often involves turbulent, forceful movement — like raging water or rapids. The meanings of excitement and violence naturally connect to this image of water in violent motion, thrashing with intensity. Over time, the character came to express any kind of intense, forceful emotion or action, whether physical or emotional.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).
Components
- 氵
- 敫
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 16
- Kangxi radical
- 85
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #560 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+06FC0