Meaning & readings
concentrated, thick, dark, undiluted
On’yomi ノウ
Kun’yomi こ.い
Nanori の
Origin
The left component, water, shows this character is about liquid or moisture. The right component, which depicts farming or agricultural abundance, provides a sound hint for how to pronounce the character — it doesn't describe the meaning itself. When you add the water radical to suggest a liquid quality and combine it with the sound hint, you get a character meaning thick or concentrated liquid, like a dark, undiluted sauce or dye. The idea is that concentrated liquids appear darker and denser, much like the visual weight of the farming component alongside the water radical.
Components
- 氵
- 農
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
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1200 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+06FC3