Meaning & readings
empty, sky, void, vacant, vacuum
On’yomi クウ
Kun’yomi そら、あ.く、あ.き、あ.ける、から、す.く、す.かす、むな.しい
Nanori うつ、き、く
Origin
The character 空 combines a hole or cavity (穴, the radical at the top) with the sound component 工 below it. The hole radical makes sense for the meaning because an empty space or void is fundamentally an absence—a hollow area. The 工 component doesn't add meaning; it's a sound hint that helped speakers remember roughly how to pronounce the character. Over time, the meaning expanded from "hole" or "empty space" to include the sky itself, since the sky appears as vast empty space above us.
Common words
Easily confused with
These look alike but are unrelated in meaning — check the stroke that differs.
Reference
- Strokes
- 8
- Kangxi radical
- 116
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Grade 1 (Kyōiku)
- Frequency rank
- #304 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 4
- Unicode
- U+07A7A