Meaning & readings
provisions, food, bread
On’yomi リョウ、ロウ
Kun’yomi かて
Origin
The character 糧 combines rice (米), the basic component for grain and food, on the left side with 量 on the right, which serves as a sound hint suggesting the pronunciation. The left-side rice radical immediately signals that this character deals with grain or food provisions. The right component doesn't add meaning but rather tells you roughly how to say the character — similar to how many Japanese characters pair a meaningful radical with a sound guide. Together, this visual pairing efficiently combines "what it is" (rice and food) with "how to say it" (the sound hint), creating the word for provisions or foodstuffs.
Common words
Reference
- Strokes
- 18
- Kangxi radical
- 119
- Formation type
- Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint)
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #1354 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- level 1
- Unicode
- U+07CE7