Meaning & readings
single, alone, spontaneously, Germany
On’yomi ドク、トク
Kun’yomi ひと.り
Nanori どいつ、どっ
Origin
The character 独 combines a component meaning "dog" on the left with the character for "insect" (虫) on the right, which serves as a sound hint for pronunciation. The "dog" component historically conveyed the sense of something standing alone or separate, since a dog was often depicted as a solitary animal. Together, these elements create a character that came to mean "alone" or "single" — the idea of something set apart by itself. Over time, the meaning extended to describe independent or spontaneous action, and much later was borrowed to refer to Germany in modern Japanese.
Components
- ⺨
- 虫
A sound hint component points at the character’s pronunciation, not its meaning — don’t read a meaning into it.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 94
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 5 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #365 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+072EC