Meaning & readings
watch over, see
On’yomi カン
Kun’yomi み.る
Origin
This character combines "hand" (手) and "eye" (目) to show the act of watching or observing. The image is of a hand held up to the eyes, shading them so you can see better into the distance—a natural gesture people make when they need to look carefully at something. By combining these two concrete body parts, the character captures the idea of actively watching over or examining something closely. The hand component adds the sense of deliberate action, making it mean not just passively seeing, but actively looking with purpose.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 9
- Kangxi radical
- 109
- Formation type
- Compound ideographic (combined meanings)
- Grade
- Grade 6 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #1060 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 2
- Unicode
- U+0770B