Meaning & readings
do, change, make, benefit, welfare, be of use, reach to, try, practice, cost, serve as, good, advantage, as a result of
Origin
This character appears to combine a picture of an elephant or large animal (the curved strokes forming the body and trunk) with fire or heat below it. The idea is that when you apply heat or effort to something—like heating and shaping an animal hide or material—you change and transform it into something useful. Over time, this visual idea of applying force or heat to create change broadened to mean "to do," "to make," and "to benefit" more generally. The character essentially shows action and transformation in motion.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).
Components
- 丶
- 勹
- 勹
- 灬
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 86
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #831 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+070BA